Hail to the Chump
by Loke Groundrunner
Summary: After getting in trouble for writing violent children's songs, Solid Snake is forced to perform odd jobs for the president, who is too lazy to do them himself. Bodily injuries and comic peril ensue.
1. Bleeding Rainbow

_To joebthegreat,_

_My literary hero and all-around god of insanity._

_May the Kazzjaff watch over and protect you, my friend._

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Super Smash Brothers, Solid Snake or Clifford the Big Red Dog. All characters are property of their respective copyright holders. I'm just a guy writing a fanfic with these characters in it (Or in the words of Homer Simpson, "One, two, please don't sue!").

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><p>Solid Snake sat in a children's reading room in a library in downtown Washington, D.C.; the carpet was red and fuzzy, toy airplanes hung from the ceiling on strings and thirty little kids sat on the floor, circled around Snake. Their mothers stood in the background, drinking coffee, smoking and talking about how much they hated their husbands.<p>

"Clifford had been a bad little doggie," Snake read in a childish voice. "He had disobeyed Emily Elizabeth's warning not to go to that Kid Rock concert down at the beach last night and drank a twenty gallon tank of beer that the Kid had reserved to drink for himself and/or spray on the audience. He was as drunk as a skunk."

Snake was here today because it was part of his prison sentence. You see, several years back Snake's home, a log cabin in western Maine, was destroyed in a most unfortunate accident. In order to make enough money to rebuild his home, Snake sought out a career as a children's musician. He found fame and fortune and was able to rebuild his beloved cabin by writing songs that graphically retold his violent, M-rated adventures to an EC-rated audience. He topped charts worldwide with such number-one hits as 'Revolver Ocelot got His Hand Cut Off', 'S is for SOCOM', and 'I Snap Your Neck'.

He soon came to learn that the games of fame and fortune often come with bundled with an expansion pack called controversy. Following his success, Snake was dragged before numerous senatorial sub-committees regarding violence in the media. After months of a dog and pony show, Snake spent two months in a federal prison (Read that as a minimum security prison with palm trees and piña coladas) and was forced to spend an entire week locked in a cell listening to Katy Perry's song "Firework" and every song ever recorded by the Dave Matthews Band (Read that as psychological torture).

Now a semi-free man, the last part of Snake's sentence forced him into involuntary servitude, taking orders from the President of the United States himself for an indefinite period of time (Read that as doing the crap the President is too lazy to do for himself).

And that is exactly what Snake was doing today. Rather than watching the complete first season of 24 or chilling out to the mellow sounds of Genesis, Rob Thomas or Michael Bublé, he was forced to sit here in this library, reading to a bunch of little kids in the place of the president. Other presidents always made time to do stupid stuff like this in order to make themselves look good, but not this president. This president was too lazy to be bothered. He'd much rather be sitting up there in the White House on his butt all day, counting his bribe money until the cows came home.

But rather than dwelling on such politically polarizing thoughts any further, Snake continued reading. All of the kids' eyes were bugged out in terror as they listened to Snake's macabre tale. It technically wasn't really Snake's story seeing as how he had stolen it from some guy he interrogated (Read: tortured) a while back.

People would always tell you the most fascinating stories after you cut their big toe off.

"…And then Sheriff Lewis called Animal Control and had Clifford put to sleep. The end."

No sooner had Snake closed the loose-leaf binder that held his story that one of the kids, a little black-haired boy, started bawling hysterically. Within five seconds, all of the other twenty-nine children joined in and were crying along with him. The mothers were too busy smoking and gossiping to care.

Seeing as the women didn't feel like being mothers today, Snake felt that it was high time to channel his inner mother. He closed his eyes and envisioned himself as a heavyset, middle-aged woman in mom jeans. He opened his eyes and tried his best to reason with the kids. "Hey, don't cry kids," said Snake in an assuring voice. "Clifford isn't even real."

Upon saying that last line, the kids began to cry even harder and louder than before. The mothers finally decided it was time to stop smoking and bad-mouthing their husbands. They began to huddle around their children, asking them what was wrong and doing all of that other crap moms are supposed to do.

"MOMMY!" shrieked a blond girl in a screechy screech. "THAT BAD MAN KILLED CLIFFORD!"

"Mr. Snake made Sheriff Lewis say bad words, mommy," said a little brown-haired boy, his eyes wide with horror as he clung to his mother's shoulder (Snake's Clifford book contained swearing and other objectionable content that would have put _The Chocolate War _and _Catcher in the Rye _to shame).

Snake got up and started to inch his way to the door, wanting to get out before things got really hairy. Then an angry red-headed woman walked up to Snake and slapped him across the face. "You monster! They shouldn't let you anywhere near children!"

Snake rubbed his face and smiled. He always had a thing for angry chicks and he hadn't had a girlfriend since he didn't know when, so he asked the woman, "Will you go out with me?" She smacked him even harder this time. She stormed away from him and yet another angry woman came up to him and kicked him in the groin, hard. "You'll be hearing from my lawyer, pig!" Snake keeled over and hit the ground. He lay there for several minutes, feeling nothing but his searing groin pain and subsequent kicks from the angry women.

Once he was able to shut himself off from the pain by going into a meditative trance and imaging himself being beaten senselessly by Shaolin monks, he threw a flashbang on the ground, covered his eyes and made a mad dash for the front door.

Once the women were able to see again, a blond woman pointed a ridiculously long, fake fingernail at the man as he ran for the door. "THERE HE GOES! DON'T LET HIM GET AWAY!"

* * *

><p>Snake ran out of the building, sliding down the banister of the library's staircase and jumping into the air. He knocked some unfortunate kid who was passing by off of his skateboard and started shredding his way toward his awaiting limousine.<p>

Behind him, Snake could hear the angry women pouring out of the building, screaming wildly for his head. Thankfully, Snake could see his limo in sight. The driver, some guy in a black suit and black sunglasses stood silently by the car, smoking a cigarette. Snake jumped off of the skateboard and started babbling.

"YOU'VEGOTTAHELPMECRAZYWOMENWANTM EDEADWANTTODRINKMYBLOODAWWFO RTHELOVEOFALLTHAT'SGOODANDHOLYYOUGOTTAHELPME!"

"Alright, alright, slow down buddy," said the driver. "What's goin' on?"

Snake whimpered and wordlessly pointed his thumb over his shoulder to the bloodthirsty mob of women converging behind him, too worn out to say anything. The driver's eyes bugged out and he quickly jumped into the car. Snake threw the passenger door open and climbed in. The two of them slammed the doors shut and the driver hit the gas, speeding off as fast as he could.

The women ran after the limo. The limo sped fast and furiously down the road, fast and furiously accidently running over some unfortunate old lady and her Schnauzer. A minute after that moment of carnage, the driver looked into his passenger mirror. "I think we're starting to lose them!"

Snake stuck his head out of the passenger's window. He could see that the angry mobs of women were starting to fade away into the foreground, becoming only angry blurs. He stuck his head back inside and both he and the driver sighed in relief.

But just when they thought that they were out of the woods, a ninja jumped onto the hood of the car, stylishly twirling his nunchuks and screaming a bunch of varied, incredibly cool-sounding death threats in Japanese. The driver let out a stereotypical girlish scream. Snake stereotypically rolled his eyes, pulled out his 9mm and nonchalantly shot the ninja through the windshield.

The ninja's eyes rolled upward and he fell off of the car. His bones made a sickening yet oh, so satisfying crunching sound as the limousine ran him over. His nunchuks flew from his hand, hit some guy on the street corner in the head who was thinking about cheating on his wife and killed him, thus saving his marriage.

The driver gave Snake a look of shock and awe. Snake looked fondly down at his 9mm and smiled. "And that, children, is why you never bring nunchuks to a gunfight…"

* * *

><p>A few hours later Snake was inside the White House, making his way up the stairs to the Oval Office, where he would report his mission to the president.<p>

Snake always laughed bitterly to himself when he thought about the president. To even equate such an honorable title with that incompetent moron was an insult. He had come into office promising hope and change, promising that he would move America forward in a changing world, but that had all been empty talk. Very little had changed since he took office; people were still out of work, the economy was still in the tank and the current administration was more concerned with lining its pockets and furthering its own agenda rather than being willing to listen to the voice of the people.

Snake stood outside the doors leading to the Oval Office. He took a deep breath, opened the doors and stepped inside. The air smelled different in here; was it the smell of power, corruption or Lysol? Either way, it smelled different.

The President sat behind his desk, his chair swiveled towards the three large windows behind him. "So, you went to the library and read to the kids?"

"Yes, sir," said Snake in a very bitter voice. How he hated this man…

The chair spun around to face Snake. The man couldn't help but cringe internally as he beheld the abomination himself.

"I'm-a so glad to hear that!" said Wario as he jumped out of his chair and waddled his way to Snake. The fat little man was dressed in a black suit, a red tie and a pair of green clogs. It didn't matter to Snake that Wario had traded his shirt and overalls for a more expensive outfit, he was still as rotten and greedy as he had ever been.

Wario stood in front of Snake and held out his hand. Snake reluctantly shook it, staring into the hideous, grinning face of the president. Snake sighed to himself. What had this nation come to? Whatever happened to the good old days when people voted for politicians who cheated on their wives, covered stuff up and sold themselves out to big business? What were they thinking when they went into those booths and voted for his fat, smelly imbecile?

Wario's journey to the White House had begun three years ago when he took first place in a presidential candidate lookalike contest posing as Hillary Clinton. After winning the contest, people liked him so much that he was eventually nominated as the candidate of the Federalist Party (Commonly referred to as the Republicrat Party); a splinter party formed from a group of disgruntled Democrats and Republicans who had grown tired of the stagnation and corruption of the two-party system.

Wario defeated both of his Democratic and Republican challengers (Although not without some electoral controversy) and became the first third-party president in American history. He was able to do this primarily because he claimed that he would use his atomic fart powers to move America's faltering economy forward. However, this was yet another one of those BS promises that politicians make in order to convince the suckers, uh, voters to go with them. Attempts to refine Wario's farts as a form of alternative fuel had proved disastrous. Thanks to Wario's Alternative Energy Program, ten million jobs had been saved or created, but three million people had been killed or disintegrated in the process.

Speaking of Wario's fart powers, Snake smelled a horrible acrid scent in the air. He grunted in disgust. _So that's what that smell was,_ Snake said to himself. Wario chuckled, grinning even wider than he was before. "Sorry about-a that. I had-a too much-a chili for the lunch."

Snake let go of Wario's hand and covered his nose, trying its darndest to block out the awful stench. The bearded man cursed. "Don't you believe in using air fresheners, Wario?"

"I don't-a believe in nothing," smiled Wario as he reached into his pockets, pulling out several loose dollar bills and coins. "Except-a the Almighty Dollar! Wah-hah-hah-hah-hah!" He threw the money in the air and started twirling around the room, his arms sticking out like the blades of a helicopter.

Snake just stood there in disbelief, watching Wario as he spun around the room. After a couple minutes, Wario's spinning had slowed to a halt and the money had stopped raining down. The President then looked down and became wide-eyed as he saw the money scattered about on the floor. He quickly picked up the money while muttering "Precioussss" and then looked at Snake. "Oh, sorry about-a that," Wario chuckled as he rubbed his neck sheepishly. "Sometimes, the cockroach that-a lives in-a my brain make-a me do weird things!"

The bearded man rolled his eyes. "Cockroach. Sure." This guy was a cockroach as far as Snake was concerned.

Wario then looked at Snake, scratching his buttocks in confusion. "Now, what-a were we talking about-a?"

Snake sighed. "About my 'mission' at the library, Mr. President…" He tired hard not to throw up every time he called Wario by that title.

"Oh yeah, I-a remember now! How did-a things go?"

"Well, I guess it went okay," said Snake calmly. "If by okay you mean I had a roomful of THIRTY FRICKIN' KIDS CRYING, THEIR MOMS TRYING TO KILL ME AND A RANDOM NINJA ATTACK! If you consider that okay then yes, IT WENT JUST PEACHY!"

Wario's face became gravely serious. He then busted out laughing and began violently rolling on the floor. "Wah-hah-hah-hah-hah! Man, I'm-a glad I didn't go! They would've killed me! Wah-hah-hah-hah!"

Snake muttered, "What a shame that would be." _Not that Dedede would make a good replacement anyways_, he thought to himself admonishingly.

After rolling on the floor and laughing his you-know-what off a minute later, Wario got up and waddled over to his desk. Plopping down in the chair, he opened a drawer and pulled out a head of garlic. He threw the whole thing in his mouth and leaned back in his chair, chewing the garlic and letting out a loud belch which was followed by a shaft of fire coming out of his mouth.

"Thanks-a, Snake. I thank-a you, and America thank-a you. Here, have-a one of the new ten dollar bills." Wario placed a ten dollar bill on the desk and Snake came over and picked it up. He really had to fight the urge to puke now: Alexander Hamilton's portrait had been replaced with a picture of Wario grinning moronically. Plus on the back of the bill, the national motto had been changed from 'In God We Trust' to 'Greed is Good' and the image on the back was now Wario, who was dressed in a toga and laurel, smiling sleazily and holding a burlap sack with a dollar sign on it in one hand.

"You-a wouldn't believe how much I had-a to bribe those guys at the Mint to change-a the bill! Besides, what did-a that Hamilton guy ever do anyways?"

Snake felt it was time to one-up Wario, so he started spewing random educational facts.

"Well, he was the first Secretary of the Treasury, he was involved in the first major political sex scandal in American history, he created the one of predecessors of the Coast Guard, he dueled Aaron Burr and lost, he—"

"DON'T TALK-A OUTTA LINE!" bellowed Wario. "I'M-A THE PRESIDENT AND AS-A LONG AS I SIT-A IN-A THIS CHAIR, I MAKE-A THE RULES!"

Just then, Wario accidently fell out of his chair onto the floor. He pulled himself up, and laughed nervously. "Heh heh heh, that time didn't-a count…" He dusted his pants off with his hands and hopped back on the chair.

Snake had just about enough of Wario for one day, so he began to make his way out of the Oval Office. Just has he had approached the double doors, Wario called to him, "Uh, Snake? There's just-a one-a a more-a thing I need-a you to do for me today…"

TO BE CONTINUED…


	2. Snake Goes To Taco Bell

**Disclaimer: **I OWN NOTHING!

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><p><em>Solid Snake: military operative. Guy with a badass beard who has a weird fetish for cardboard boxes. Once the world's most beloved children's musician, he has been torn away from the career he loved by an overbearing government with too much time on its hands. Having had his posterity stolen, Snake is forced to serve as the personal errand boy for Wario Jon Bon Jovi Wario, the morbidly obese, morally corrupt President of the United States. Embittered and disillusioned, Snake finds himself once again thrust into a harsh and unforgiving world; a world where greed and corruption rule supreme. A world where all…<em>

HAIL TO THE CHUMP

_Previously on Hail to the Chump: _

_Snake went to a library to read to a group of children in Wario's place when all hell broke loose. After upsetting the kids by reading them an M-rated Clifford fanfic he had stolen off some guy he tortured, Snake incurred the wrath of a mob of angry mothers who tried to kill him. Narrowly escaping sudden death, Snake ran over an old lady and her dog, shot a ninja who also wanted him dead for some reason and made it back to the White House to receive his meager pay. _

_And now…_

* * *

><p>Snake had just about enough of Wario for one day. He began to leave when Wario called to him, "Uh, Snake? There's just-a one-a more-a thing I need-a you to do for me today…"<p>

Snake shivered. As long as it didn't involve flossing the gunk from between Wario's toes, he could probably make it through the day without throwing up.

"What is it, Mr. President?" he growled.

Wario got up from his seat again and walked over to Snake. "Let's-a take a walk and I'll-a explain everything."

The president led Snake out of the Oval Office and down the stairs to the White House's kitchen. Wario stood in front of the massive doors that led into the kitchen and made a motion with his right hand for Snake to come by him. Snake walked over to Wario's side and the fat little man suddenly hopped up on to Snake's neck. The operative almost let out a cry of surprise, but the president clamped a hand over his mouth to silence him.

"Don't-a make-a too much noise," whispered Wario as he pointed to the door's glass window panes. "Look-a in there…"

Snake inched his way to the glass, straining under the titanic weight of Wario. This guy really needed to learn the meaning of the words Weight Watchers.

Snake looked through the window panes and saw that big pink puffball we all know as Kirby, but who is alternatively known as Sir Kirby Puffington in the UK and Rafael Zarragosa in Mexico. He was dressed in a chef's hat and was hard at work, cooking up something in a large steel pot. As he stirred the concoction, purple smoke and flames rose up from deep within the pot.

"You see, Snake," began Wario, who was still sitting on Snake's shoulders and giving the poor man a backache that would make any chiropractor proud, "We-a hired this-a celebrity chef who was-a big a few years back, but then he had a bad divorce and ate-a his therapist and-a spit-a him out because he taste-a no good. I heard-a his story and felt-a bad for him, so I gave-a him the job as-a the White House's chef."

"Yeah, so what's the problem with that?" asked Snake impatiently, his back aching and his nose burning from a foul smell that came forth from Wario's hindquarters.

"Just-a watch and see," said Wario quietly.

Kirby continued to stir his mixture and added some salt to it. He then put his spoon and shaker down on a nearby counter and returned to the pot. He looked around the kitchen to make sure no one could see him (He was unable to see Wario and Snake because of an unexplained plothole). Determining the cost was clear, the puffball proceeded to suck up the entire contents of the pot, as well as the pot itself. He then threw himself onto the kitchen floor, clutching his stomach while moaning in ecstasy.

"That's-a the problem," said Wario as he hopped off of Snake's neck. "He make-a the food, but he eat-a it all for himself!"

_Gee, I wonder who that sounds like_, thought Snake sarcastically as he recalled the time Wario held a brunch for the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives to celebrate the passage of his healthcare bill and ate all of the food for himself (Wario's healthcare law really didn't change anything, but it did have a bill attached to it that provided free body parts to zombies, thus reducing the chances of a zombie apocalypse by 95 percent).

"You want me to fire Kirby?" asked Snake nervously as he rubbed his aching back and neck. He had no desire to get tangled up with Kirby at all. He had a long record of bad experiences with Kirby. There was that awful day three years ago when he caught Kirby cooking eggs, bacon and biscuits on his satellite dish back at his log cabin in Maine. The puffball had beaten him up badly, pounded his face into a pile of compost and then went on to eat a couple people.

And then there was that time four years before when Kirby ate his prized sleigh dog team on Christmas Eve…

"No, that's-a too dangerous," said Wario, interrupting Snake's sad thoughts. "We'll hit-a him over the head when he's-a sleeping, put-a him in a box and mail-a him to Somalia. What I need-a you to do for me is-a to go to Taco Bell down-a the road from here and get-a me twenty chicken gorditas, thirty grilled steak tacos and-a one of them caramel apple empanadas I like-a so much."

That nauseous feeling Snake was fighting was coming back again. He was really getting annoyed now. "Why can't you just go yourself?" He said in an angry growl. "It doesn't sound like it's that far away from the White House."

"Oh, I would-a go, Snake," said Wario, a very sincere look spreading across his ugly face. "But you know— AAAAAAAAHHH!"

Suddenly, Wario dropped to the ground and began clutching his left foot.

"Oh, what a horrible foot-a pain I've got-a all of a sudden! Mama Mia! I don't-a think I could-a make it down there! Oh Snake, you've gotta go in-a my place. I'm-a in a bad-a state!" Snake could swear that for a moment he thought he could see Wario smiling as he held onto his "sore" foot.

Snake rolled his eyes. "Yes, Mr. President…"

It was going to be a long night…

* * *

><p>It was finally about nine o'clock that evening when Snake finally made it down to Taco Bell. His consternation only grew larger when he saw the long line of hookers, drug addicts and other lowlifes spilling out of the eatery's entrance.<p>

Snake lit a cigarette, inhaled the carcinogenic smoke and blew it out of his mouth. He tapped his foot impatiently, wishing that he had brought his iPod with him.

After what seemed like an eternity, Snake finally got inside Taco Bell. In the eating area, he saw that some inner city street gang was having a poetry slam/breakdance hybrid event going on in there. He always fancied himself as a guy with a thing for the arts and would have gladly joined in with them, but he was on a mission from the Moron-In-Chief. He couldn't be bothered with really meaningful stuff like the arts right now.

Snake stepped up near the front of the line. There were two scummy-looking guys in front of him who were dressed in boxer shorts and a-shirts and had really long, hair band-like hair styles. As they took their orders, they talked amongst themselves about how they both had just been paroled.

When they had taken their orders, Snake walked up to the counter and gave his order to some nerdy high school kid with frizzy red hair and bad acne. He opted to get a wheelbarrow to carry out Wario's order. Realizing that he hadn't he eaten any dinner, he ordered a steak quesadilla for himself.

After wheeling the wheelbarrow outside and parking it near one of the tables out in front of the restaurant, Snake sat down at the table and unwrapped his steak quesadilla. Just as he was about to take a bite out of it, he heard a small voice that seemed to come from below say "Yo quiero Taco Bell."

Snake looked down. Sitting on the ground next to his chair was a blonde-furred Chihuahua with bright little eyes and a wagging little tail. It looked longingly up at Snake, its bright little eyes wide and its little pointy ears flattened against its head. "Aw, poor little guy," said Snake quietly. He ripped a piece off of his quesadilla and gave it to the dog. The Chihuahua happily ate the food and quickly trotted away from the table.

Snake watched as the Chihuahua walked away. He smiled and thought _I should get a dog again someday…_. He turned back to his quesadilla, picked it up and took a few bites out of it. A minute or so later, he heard a familiar sound: "Yo quiero Taco Bell". He looked down again and saw that the Chihuahua was back. It looked up inquisitively at Snake, cocked its head to the left and started whimpering softly.

Snake got up and looked down at the dog. I _guess he isn't full yet_. He put what remained of the quesadilla on the table and reached down to pick the cute little doggie up.

"Aww, what's wrong, little— AGGHHHHH!"

Suddenly, the Chihuahua threw itself on Snake's face and proclaimed angrily in Spanish, "¡Voy a rasgar su cara fuera de su cráneo, Gringo estúpido!"

Snake could feel the dog's claws digging into his face as he tried as hard as he could to rip the beast off of him. The dog was slobbering all over his face as it was trying to bite his nose off. Snake fumbled around blindly as he searched for the table. He hoped that he could find the last piece of his quesadilla to try to get rid of the dog.

_Success._ Snake's left hand had found the table and the piece of quesadilla, while his right hand was trying to rip the Chihuahua off of his face. Holding the quesadilla between his left ring and little fingers, Snake used both of his hands to rip the rabid dog off of his face. He heard a loud tearing sound as he pulled the dog off, but whatever that was didn't matter now.

He held the dog by the scruff of its neck with his right hand. The Chihuahua thrashed violently as it tried to break free from Snake's grasp, uttering various colorful vulgarities in Spanish. Snake walked behind the Taco Bell and threw the quesadilla and the dog as far as he could towards some bushes far in the back.

Snake wiped his hands in accomplishment. Coming out from behind the eatery, he walked to the table, dug a napkin out of the environmentally-friendly paper bag that his meal had come in and wiped the blood off of his face. He then began to notice that a crowd of college kids had begun to form around him and none of them looked very happy.

Some blonde college girl wearing a green shirt and blue jeans yelled at Snake "You monster! You threw a poor defenseless dog!"

"Lady, that dog was far from defenseless!" Snake argued, feeling more blood running down his face from the dog attack.

"You were the one who provoked him!" shouted an irate male hipster dressed in an orange shirt and brown pants.

Snake waved his hand dismissively at them. He was so angry with Wario and his face was mauled so badly, he didn't feel like getting into an argument with these kids. He walked over to his table and grabbed the wheelbarrow with the president's order in it, while ignoring the angry rhetoric of the collegians. He probably should've gone to the hospital to get his injuries examined, but Wario was the kind of guy who hated waiting.

He could feel his hatred, along with his stomach acid, rising inside of him as he began to make the trek back to the White House. He was so lost in his thoughts of the kinds of Quentin Tarantino-style vengeance he wanted to inflict upon Wario, he didn't the black Sedan racing down the road towards him.

Before he knew what was going to happen, the car slammed into him and sent him flying into the sky. Snake came down on the pavement with a loud crunch, his head striking the ground. Hard. At least he was in so much pain that he couldn't feel his horrible neck and back pain anymore.

He blacked out for a minute and had a near-death experience where an angel and a demon that both looked like Wario argued over who got the rights to take his soul. Then he woke up.

Snake lay there on the blacktop, floating somewhere on the threshold between life, death and that blessed place they call Miller Time. While he was trying his best to remain in this mortal coil, he could see through his weary eyes a cat approaching him. The cat, a white Siamese, stood inches from Snake's torn-up face.

"Who are you?" asked Snake weakly.

"I am Pissy Galore," said the Siamese in a reedy voice, its green eyes widening.

"I must be dreaming…"

Snake passed out, colder than a guy in metallic underwear. The cat jumped on Snake's back and urinated on the unconscious man. The only consolation was that the wheelbarrow was untouched, still standing in the spot it had been when Snake got hit.

* * *

><p>Later that night, Wario sat in the Oval Office, greedily munching down his dinner, taking huge bites from a chicken gordita and a grilled steak taco in his left hand and the caramel-apple empanada in his right.<p>

"Mama Mia! That's-a the good stuff!" said Wario happily as he continued pigging out. "Kirby only wished that he could make-a stuff this-a good! That-a is, if he didn't eat-a all of it…" He sipped from the soft drink on the desk and stared at Snake.

"What? Are you gonna stand-a there all night or something?"

Snake stood about ten feet away from Wario's desk. He was so badly mangled up that if he were one of those rubber corpses on NCIS, Ducky would be having a field day right now. He was bleeding profusely, his ribs broken and his clothes were drenched in bodily fluids. Snake would've cussed Wario out something fierce, but after what he had been through, he was afraid that if he started talking his jaw might fall off of his skull.

A couple minutes later, Snake passed out on the floor from blood loss with a loud thud. Wario was too busy eating to give a crap.

Sometime later, Wario got up and walked over to the unconscious Snake, sniffing the air. He shoved a plastic tray full of Mexican rice and beans into his mouth. "The least-a you could do is-a take a shower; you smell-a like cat pee."

* * *

><p>AN: Here's a translation guide for the stuff that the Chihuahua was saying:

"Yo quiero Taco Bell."

I want Taco Bell.

"¡Voy a rasgar su cara fuera de su cráneo, Gringo estúpido!"

I will rip your face off of your skull, stupid Gringo!

I'm not really good with Spanish (I had to use an English-to-Spanish online translator to come up with these), so if I transcribed them wrong, feel free to PM me.


	3. Toilet Snake, Part One

Disclaimer: Don't own Super Smash Bros or Solid Snake. 'Nuff said.

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><p>It was another one of those boring days in Washington, D.C.; politicians were cheating on their wives, engaging in backroom deals and sitting in pointless hearings that never resolved the issues that people really care about. It was on this day that President Wario was holding an equally pointless and nonessential press conference in the East Room of the White House.<p>

Wario stood at the podium. The media stood out in the crowd, getting ready to spin whatever he said completely out of proportion.

"Mr. President," asked a reporter from Fixed News, the most unreliable name in news. "How do you explain the fact that your approval ratings have continued to plummet ever since the Wariogate Affair* last year and have not yet rebounded?"

Wario laughed. He got this question all the time. "Oh, that's-a easy. The public is-a too stupid to understand or appreciate all of the stuff me and-a Capitol Hill do for them." When he saw that the room had grown quiet and that each reporter's mouth was hanging agape, he quickly shuffled the papers on the podium and chuckled, "Eh heh heh, next-a question."

Within seconds, the press had recovered from their momentary shock (serving as a reminder that while the media may consist primarily of propagandists, crooks and spin doctors, they are at least propagandists, crooks and spin doctors that have souls).

"Mr. President! Mr. President!" screamed a reporter from SeeBS, the news source that Americans go to in order to see BS. "Do you and your administration plan on getting involved in the situation in Kookamungastan?"

"Could you please outline the details of your Six-Six-Six Tax Plan?" cut in a reporter from PMSNBC, the news network that's run by forty-something liberal feminists.

Before the fat man could answer, another reported called out, "Mr. President, how do you respond to critics who claim that greenhouse gasses have increased by 80 percent since you've taken office?"

Wario was feeling so overloaded by the press' questions that he could feel his pet cockroach Roachie running around inside his cranium like a kid on a sugar binge. The president sighed sadly. Aside from the kickbacks, the frequent flier miles and the free monographed pens, he was beginning to realize that there really wasn't much good reason to want to be president. There was too much stress involved in the job and he hated talking to the press.

The fat man continued to angst poetic, until he saw out of the corner of his eye an aide walking over to him. The aide came close to him and whispered "Mr. President, there's a situation…"

Wario's face went pale as the aide continued to relate his tale to him. "Oh-a, no…" he said quietly. Turning toward the press, he said in a much louder voice, "Uh, a situation has-a come-a to my attention. Any further questions can-a be directed to my press secretary, Mona."

Wario quickly waddled away from the podium and Mona stepped up. She had long red hair and blue eyes. She was dressed in a black business suit and was the only pretty face in an otherwise ugly administration.

She flipped her hair and winked at the press. "Okay boys, any questions?"

The only sound that could be heard was the sound of all of the men in the room drooling on themselves. All of the women in the room rolled their eyes and collectively thought, _Men._

The president chuckled as he walked down a hallway with his aide "I should-a called-a her out-a earlier." Wario's legs were trembling badly with fear as he walked down the hall; he had just received some very bad news and was terrified by its implications, but he knew the man to call…

* * *

><p>After spending a month in intensive care following being hit by a car, mauled by a rabid Chihuahua, having his ribs broken, suffering extensive blood loss and being urinated on by a cat, Solid Snake had managed to recover with only minimal pain and horrible emotional scarring that would never go away.<p>

Anyhow, Snake was back to his pathetically tedious life of being President Wario's errand boy. But today was a different day: he was home in his rugged, manly mancave also known as his lakefront log cabin in western Maine. He had just finished his incredibly unhealthy breakfast of pancake-coated sausages and was now at work, dusting his home while listening to his "cleaning mix" on his iPod. He was dressed in camouflage pajamas and pink bunny slippers.

Snake sang along loudly to his favorite hits from Genesis, Rob Thomas and Michael Bublé as well as his favorite glam rock tunes from the 80's. He grooved about his mancave with a dust rag in one hand and his iPod in another. He dusted off his German cuckoo clock, his piano, his portraits of Theodore Roosevelt, JFK and Ronald Reagan, his writing desk, the box he used as his bed and his beloved television, which he used to watch the History Channel, all of the various Lamestream Media outlets and of course his favorite show, 24 (Except for the eighth season, which sucked).

Snake was still dusting, loudly singing along to "Heat Of The Moment" by Asia, when he heard a pounding sound coming from his back door. He sighed, removed his iPod's earbuds, put his dusting rag down and went to the front door. Opening it, he saw that angry old guy who lived next door to him, along with his angry old wife.

They were called the Grouchingtons, the grouchy old people who moved next door after Snake's former neighbor, an old widow named Gladys J. Rutherford-Winklebottom, had left three years ago. Gladys had moved away with her new husband, a wealthy little monkey named D. James Kong, to become part of a life of glitz, glamour and overly-lavish mansions with golden toilets.

D. James Kong, who was really Diddy Kong, had faked his death and collected a massive life insurance policy after he had lost his prized banana stash to the soon-to-be president Wario. Diddy, or D. James, used his newfound wealth to seduce Gladys into marrying him. He married Gladys not because he loved her, but because marrying octogenarians was the "in" thing that year.

Being a particularly nasty old witch who didn't have the fortune of growing up watching Mr. Roger's Neighborhood and learning about the concept of sharing, Gladys eventually murdered her husband and took all of his wealth for herself, thus becoming America's most wealth eighty-year-old as according to Nasty Old Witches Magazine.

Anyways, the Grouchingtons were at Snake's door and they didn't look very happy.

"Turn down that hippie crap, you punk kid!" said Mr. Grouchington angrily. "Yeah!" said Mrs. Grouchington, her hands on her hips. "Some of us have crossword puzzles and Sudoku to do, you know!"

Snake rolled his eyes. If it wasn't Wario who was driving him nuts, it was these two old fossils. Forget the Grouchingtons; their last names should have been the Killjoys. They didn't want him to sing too loudly; they complained whenever he had his covert ops buddies over to play war games and they wouldn't even let him do a snuff film in his own backyard!

"And another thing!" said Mr. Grouchington, pointing down at Snake's feet. "Get some manly slippers! You look like an old lady!"

"Hey!" snarled Mrs. Grouchington, angrily looking down at her own pink fuzzy bunny slippers.

"Sorry, honey."

That was it. You could insult Snake's taste in music and he would take it. You could tie him to a table and try to cut him open with a laser and he would just laugh it off. You could try to torture him with a power drill and he would just sing opera instead of scream in pain. But there was one thing you should never do to Solid Snake, and that was to insult his slippers.

You never touched the slippers.

Snake snapped like a dried branch. He grabbed the Grouchingtons and performed his patented stranglehold on them, rendering them unconscious or more likely, dead.

He stepped outside and dragged their unconscious bodies to the shore of the lake behind his house. He gave them each a mighty throw, hurling them into the lake. Hopefully, the lake had some of those crazy piranha-frog mutants that the previous administration had wasted so much taxpayer money creating to protect America's lakes and rivers from imaginary terrorists. Hopefully if there were any of the aforementioned mutants out there, they would take the Grouchingtons as an offering of brotherhood between human and mutantkind.

After this deed was done, Snake went back into his house, put his earbuds back in and started his 80's rock-off again, singing even louder than he had before. After the dusting was done, Snake sat down on his chewed-up, tobacco-stained sofa in his living room, drinking Nicaragua's Disappointment brand coffee and listening to Bach, Beethoven and Stravinsky.

Just then, the codec in his ear began to buzz loudly. Snake was so surprised that he spat out the coffee in his mouth onto his newly-carpeted living room floor. He sighed angrily, got up and shut off his stereo, the codec still buzzing.

He put his right hand to his ear and heard a gruff voice with an Italian accent. "Snake, your-a nation needs-a you!"

"How lucky I am," Snake said dryly. Whatever possessed him to get into the violent children's music that ultimately led him to this sorry state? Oh right, it was Wario's fault. He was the one who crashed his Wario Car into Snake's log cabin three years ago; he was the one who had caused all of this misfortune to happen to Snake.

Sure, the subcommittees and the courts were the ones who had given him the sentence of having to work for the president, but Wario was the one who had set all of this into motion. And he would pay dearly for that…

Snake took off his pajamas and bunny slippers and put on his sneaking suit, some manlier-looking shoes and his awesome headband. "So, what's the deal, Mr. President?" asked Snake loathingly. "Is there a little kitty cat up on the dome of the Capitol Building that needs rescuing? Do I have to come save you from ninjas like I had to do for Bush '41?"

"No-a, Snake," said Wario. "It's-a much more dangerous than that. It's-a too complicated to explain over the codec. I'm-a sending a black-a helicopter to pick-a you up."

Wario ended the codec message. Snake stomped out of the house, angrily slamming his front door and breaking the lock. Then, as if on cue, a group of ten starving locksmiths staggered out of the woods nearby, moaning like zombies as they congregated near his front door. Five of them got into a bloody fistfight over who would get the job, while five others stood by the lock, examining it.

"Urrrrgh…. We need to bump-proof this lock…" growled one.

"Hurrgh…. I'm going to need to drill this door…" groaned another.

"Hrhmmm… The damage is quite extensive…" said another.

He watched as one of the locksmiths pulled out a chintzy, brand name-removed power drill and turned it on. It suddenly burst into flames and the locksmith juggled it like it was some kind of flaming potato. He threw it towards Snake, who deftly dodged it, which caused it to land on the porch of a much more deserving family.

Just then, the five locksmiths who were fighting suddenly stopped and looked at Snake. "Urrrgh…" grunted one. "There's the homeowner!" Suddenly, all ten of them began to shamble towards Snake, shouting out unreasonable estimates. Thankfully, the black helicopter that Wario sent had just appeared overhead. It hovered directly over Snake and then a giant black claw came out from underneath and grabbed the man by his waist, lifting him up into the sky. As he was going up, two of the locksmiths grabbed hold of his legs and went up with him.

"Bad locksmiths! Shoo!" said Snake as he shook them off of his legs. He watched as the two of them fell down to the earth below and made cartoonish clouds of smoke as they were reunited with terra firma.

A couple minutes later, Snake and the helicopter were flying southward to Washington. Snake codec'd the pilot and asked him, "Hey! Are you gonna pull me up or do I have to stay out here the whole time?"

"Sorry, Mr. Snake," said the pilot. "But this is a one-person aircraft. We can't really afford two-person helicopters right now. President Wario is trying everything he can to cut spending. You know how the economy's been the last few years…"

"Yeah, tell me about it…" growled Snake. Wario would always cut some government program or funding to something and pretend he was doing it "for-a the national interest", but it was all smoke and mirrors. He didn't care about America. He didn't care if kids were forced to drop out of college because the student loans they had been relying on had disappeared. He didn't care if a young single mother couldn't afford groceries because she was deemed ineligible for food stamps. The only thing he cared about was lining his own pockets.

Before Snake could dwell on any more potentially polarizing political ponderings, he was pulled back into reality by a boisterous honking sound. He looked ahead and saw a flock of Canada Geese flying in formation strait towards him.

"Sorry, Mr. Snake," said the pilot apologetically, "but I'm going to have to fly you through that flock of geese if we want to stay on course for Washington."

"Wonderful."

Within moments, Snake found himself in the midst of a cackling, honking storm of confusion. The geese trumpeted loudly, startled, slapping at him with their wings. Dirt and dust flew from the wings into Snake's nose, causing him to sneeze. Normally, the geese would have been frightened off by such a loud noise, but today they had set their phasers to kill. No sooner had he recovered from sneezing, eight geese flew behind Snake and held him in place as several others kicked and pecked at him furiously.

"PILOT! BRING ME TO A LOWER ALTITUDE!" screamed Snake as the geese showed an incredible mastery of Kung Fu on him. He couldn't help but be reminded of that time he accidently killed Santa Claus four Christmases ago and the reindeer beat him up similarly. Animals must just hate him or something.

"Okay," said the pilot. "I'm lowering you…. NOW!"

Snake felt himself drop as the helicopter claw was lowered. The geese were startled and let go of him while the ones that were pwning him dispersed. Snake was now about a hundred feet above the ground. He sighed in relief. But then he saw the vast forest of pine trees before him and swore loudly.

He smacked straight through the trunk of a colossal pine tree, which left Snake sore and the tree with a human-shaped hole in its trunk. Then the poor guy was dragged across several hundred branches and was soon covered from head to toe with pine needles embedded in his skin. After the fun in the forest, Snake and the helicopter were in some quaint little New England town. Some kid walking on a sidewalk below with his dad pointed up at the figure covered in pine needles and said, "Look, Dad! It's Bigfoot!"

Snake growled angrily. _When I get my hands on Wario—_

His thoughts were interrupted as he crashed through the stained-glass windows of a church. Inside the sanctuary, the people sitting in the pews were screaming as the glass rained down on them.

After crashing through another wall, he was outside again. Then he screamed as he smashed through the windows of a mousetrap factory and was soon covered in dozens of mousetraps. After going through yet another wall, he heard the pilot say, "We've only got twenty more miles until we're in Washington, Mr. Snake."

"Oh, what a shame," said Snake sarcastically. "I'M JUST HAVING THE TIME OF MY LIFE DOWN HERE!"

* * *

><p>Many more profanities and injuries later, Snake arrived in D.C. after a short stop to a medic to get those pine needles and mousetraps removed. He walked into the Oval Office, his heart full of hatred for Wario.<p>

Wario was sitting at his desk, looking as ugly as ever. Vice President Dedede was in the room with him, standing by the desk. He had traded in his traditional garb for a black suit with a white and blue pinstriped tie. They both seemed to be having what grown-ups call a disagreement (Read: having a big fight). Neither politician seemed to notice the other man in the room with them.

"Ah'm tellin' you, Mr. President," said Vice President Dedede in a stereotypical Texan drawl, slamming his fist down on the desk. "The government of Kookamungastan is hidin' Weapons of Mass Dededestruction! We have to act now!"

"We've-a been-a down-a this road before," sighed Wario. Man, was he ever starting to hate his job. "We need-a to wait-a things out before we act."

"The longer we wait, the more likely they'll attack us!" shot back Dedede. Snake really wished he had brought his camcorder with him. For once, Wario and Dedede were acting like real politicians. If only they could act like adults when they weren't at each other's throats, then America might be in a better state than had been in for the last few years.

"And where-a is-a your proof for these 'Weapons of Mass Dededestruction'?" asked Wario.

"Well, we've gotten these intelligence reports, suh—"

"Intelligence means-a nothing!" angrily said Wario, bringing his fist down on the desk (Poor desk). "Just-a because one report say-a something, doesn't-a mean it's-a true!"

After Wario and Dedede went several more rounds of verbal boxing, the room fell eerily silent. It was so quiet that the only sound that could be heard was that of Roachie clicking deep inside Wario's skull.

Snake was the one who finally broke the awkward silence. "I hate to interrupt you guys while you're debating serious issues, but I got called here some kind of mission."

Both Wario and Dedede suddenly jumped to attention, pretending like nothing had been said; the president and vice president stared at Snake for a moment, blinking. Then both of them started laughing hysterically at Snake. "Hey Snake," said Dedede between laughter, pointing to the lampshade-shaped collar around Snake's neck that obscured his face. "What happened to you? You got fleas or somethin'?"

"Well, let me see," growled Snake. "I was almost set on fire by rabid locksmiths, I was attacked by a flock of geese, and I was dragged through a pine forest, smashed through some buildings and got covered with mousetraps. And because President Cheapskate over there gave me crappy health insurance, I WAS FORCED TO GO TO A VETERINARIAN!"

Wario and Dedede laughed even harder as Snake related his tale of bodily injury to them; Snake could feel the urge to kill rising within him.

"Now, see here—!" shouted Snake, attempting to defend himself.

"Uh, Snake?" said Vice President Dedede. "You're talkin' to a picture of Gordon Gekko. Me and Wario are more to your left."

Snake spun around toward them, realizing he was facing a large portrait of the infamous corporate raider. "Sorry," he said. "Dr. Miraz gave me this stupid collar so I wouldn't scratch the pine needle wounds on my neck and she put some really ridiculously small eyeholes on this thing." He pointed to the ridiculously small eye and mouth holes on the collar.

The president and vice president started laughing again; Wario was spinning around in his chair while Dedede was on the floor. Snake cleared his throat. One minute, Wario and Dedede would act like adults and in the next minute, they would be acting like two little kids again. Just like so many other politicians… "Um, I was sent here to complete a mission, not be roasted," he said angrily and impatiently.

Wario stopped laughing and hopped out of the chair. He waddled towards Snake, while Dedede still lay on the floor, laughing his dang fool head off. He led the man out of the Oval Office and down the hall to a large white door. "Snake, I've-a called you here for the most grave-a of missions," Wario began. He opened the door, which led into a titanic bathroom with white wallpaper and white tiles, complete with golden faucets, a large Jacuzzi-like bathtub and a large white toilet.

He led Snake into the bathroom. The bearded man looked around the room and thought, _I need to get that wallpaper for my bathroom…_ "Okay, this is a nice bathroom," said Snake aloud to the president, "But what does this have to do with me?"

"Everything, Snake, everything," said Wario seriously. He led Snake up to the toilet and lifted the seat. Snake could see that the water in the toilet's bowl was almost over the rim of the seat. "Snake, could-a you take-a off-a your collar for a moment?" asked Wario.

Snake took off his collar and placed it on the edge of the bathtub. Suddenly, Wario grabbed Snake's legs, lifted him into the air and stuck his head in the toilet. The bearded man let out a muffled scream which caused bubbles to rise to the surface of the toilet water. Wario flushed the toilet and used Snake as an ordinary person would use a plunger and tried to make the water in the toilet go down.

This didn't work and the water started to overflow and spill out onto the bathroom's floor. Snake screamed muffled obscenities beneath the water. The water ran across the bathroom floor and out into the hallway. Wario pulled Snake out of the toilet; the bearded man's eyes were filled with bloodlust.

He stretched out his arms to strangle the president and ran towards him. "Wario, you—AGHHHH!" Snake slipped on the wet floor and landed hard on his back. He groaned in pain.

"Well, I guess-a plungering isn't-a going to cut it," said Wario in soliloquy, walking slowly back and forth.

Snake groaned more from the floor. "Why don't you just call a plumber?"

Inside Wario's brain, Roachie the cockroach turned on a light bulb. "That's-a it!" said the president, smiling while having his eureka moment. "Plumbers! I-a need plumbers! I need-a the greatest plumbers of all-a time! The Mario Brothers! I need-a you to find-a the Mario Brothers!"

Snake groaned even more. This was starting to sound an awful lot like a road trip.

Mario had been on a temporary leave of absence from Nintendo for the last couple years. He had gone to Burbank, California with aspirations of becoming either an actor or one of those guys you see in the background of a movie that doesn't serve any constructive role, but gets paid handsomely anyways. His brother Luigi had gone to Missouri to work for a heartless, multinational retailer.

"Why can't you just call a local plumber?" groaned Snake for the millionth time as he pulled himself up off of the floor. A look of annoyance spread across Wario's face. "I said-a I need-a the greatest plumbers of all time! Duh!"

Snake sighed and growled, rubbing his face. "Well, why can't you just use a different toilet?"

"It's-a the president's toilet," insisted Wario. "It's-a reserved for the president only."

"Then where will you go to the bathroom while this toilet's out of commission?" Snake shot back at the President.

"Oh, don't-a you worry about-a that," said Wario with a devious look on his face. He rubbed his hands together. "I've-a gotta that all-a figured out… WAH-HAH-HAH-HAH!" Snake swallowed hard. Whatever Wario meant likely didn't mean good news for him.

Before embarking on his new journey, Snake washed his hair with the special formula of dog shampoo that Dr. Miraz had prescribed for him. After his hair smelled less like a toilet and more like mangoes and pineapples, he put his collar back on and left the White House. He then took an accidental detour through President's Park and inadvertently damaged several monuments because of that stupid collar and its inefficient eyeholes. That poor little boy in the Boy Scout Memorial never saw it coming…

* * *

><p>AN: The Wariogate Affair was a political catastrophe that occurred a year prior to the events of this story. Wario had taken a trip to visit the Prime Minister of Canada to lick some political boot, but things went horribly wrong. The Prime Minister (Who shall be left unnamed) had a heart attack and died from seeing how ugly Wario was in person.

Upon returning to Washington, Wario discovered that the new Prime Minister, a fellow by the name of Stockpot Bay, demanded that Wario apologize for causing the former Prime Minister's death. If he refused to apologize, Bay threatened to potentially go to war against the United States and to annex a particular American state that was suffering from economic woes into Canada. Because of the last point, Wario refused to apologize.

War between the two great nations was only adverted thanks to the quick thinking of Solid Snake and Lucas. Snake dressed Lucas up as a leprechaun and had him threaten to put a curse on Wario if he did not apologize for the former Prime Minister's death (Wario had developed a crippling fear of leprechauns ever since he had watched all six Leprechaun movies one St. Patrick's Day in order to indulge his 0.01 percent of Irish ancestry).

Wario immediately apologized and an international incident was avoided.


	4. Toilet Snake, Part Two

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Jack or his brother whose name starts with 'S' and ends with 'T'.

* * *

><p>Later that day, Snake was in a secret government base located somewhere underneath Washington (If you ever had the misfortune of discovering the location of the base, the suits would send black helicopters to come get you, in Whisper Mode). It was in this base that Dr. Crygor, the latest mad scientisttechnorati who the government had contracted to create morally ambiguous or just plain cool inventions, did his thing.

Crygor had gotten this most prestigious of jobs after he had saved the life of the previous president, who had been turned into a zombie following the outbreak of a zombie virus. Using that big, juicy chess club brain of his, Crygor managed to single-handedly create an anti-zombie virus vaccine from the skin folds of a flying squirrel, four tuffs of dog fur and two cups of blue Gatorade and thus saved America from a potentially dangerous zombie apocalypse.

Snake, with his lampshade collar, stood in one of the base's subterranean garages, where Dr. Crygor was completing the finishing touches on a black '67 Chevy Impala, which Snake was going to use to try to find Mario and Luigi so that he could fix President Wario's clogged toilet.

Dr. Crygor climbed out of the car and shut the driver's door behind him after he was done fiddling with something on the dashboard.

"Well, I think that about does it," he said, stepping back to admire his handiwork. He turned towards Snake. "It's got air foils to get you where you need to go in a hurry, a CD player and even cup holders. The only question you need to ask yourself is if you're in any condition to drive that thing."

Snake shrugged carelessly. "Doc, let me tell you something," he said behind his lampshade. "I've been on missions that were so physically and mentally challenging that they would have given Jack Bauer a stroke. If I could get through stuff that bad, I think I can drive with this thing on my head."

"Nonsense, Snake," said Crygor. "Based on what you told me happened in President's Park, you're in no state to drive an automobile. Maybe you should let me come with you."

Snake waved a hand. "Don't bother, I'll be fine."

"I insist, Snake," said Crygor, his single red eye full of seriousness (Either that or it was just light reflecting off of his visor). "It's much too dangerous for you to be driving cross-country with that thing on your head."

Snake stood there in thought for a moment. Then he looked at the doctor and said, "Sure, you can come."

Crygor was surprised that Snake had caved in that quickly. "Really?"

"No, not really."

"Awwww…"

"Okay, I'll let you come with me."

"For real?"

"Nah, I'm just screwin' with ya."

Crygor was starting to get pretty mad with Snake by now. "If you won't let me come, I'll tell President Wario about that cardboard cutout of him that you use for target practice!"

"Why, you son of a—"

"Now, now," said Dr. Crygor, wagging a finger at the man. "Let's watch our language, shall we? My granddaughter is here with me today." He waved to a pretty little red-headed girl with a heart-shaped hairclip in her hair who stood at the far end of the garage; she was wearing glasses, a lab coat, black pants and pink boots.

"Hello there, Penny!" he called to her.

"Hi, Grandpa!" she called back sweetly to him.

"What are you doing over there, Penny?" asked the doctor.

Penny stood next to Mike, her grandfather's robot slave, uh, servant who had two microphones on top of his head. She held up a screwdriver in her right hand. "I'm going to discover the inner workings of Mike!"

"No, Penny!" shouted Crygor as he ran to his granddaughter. "Don't do it! Do you want Mike to go on a homicidal rampage again?"

The girl smiled brightly. "Don't worry, Grandpa," called Penny reassuringly. "I won't make the same mistake twice!"

Roughly a year ago, Penny had messed around with Mike's central processing unit and turned the loveable karaoke robot into a bloodthirsty assassin with an insatiable desire to kill all carbon-based life forms. Thankfully, Dr. Crygor was able to act quickly and managed to rewrite Mike's programming before he could go on a widespread killing spree (The only casualty of Mike's rampage was Barney the Dinosaur, but no one really cared that he got killed).

Penny started unscrewing the panel on Mike's back as Crygor ran to her; the robot swiveled its head around to face the girl and said to her in his Auto-Tuned voice that was so Auto-Tuned it would put T-Pain to shame, "Please, little girl, don't deactivate me. I can't bear the thought of the darkness again…"

Too late.

Penny had opened the back panel and had started screwing around with Mike's motherboard. By the time Crygor got to the other side of the garage, it was too late. Mike was fading fast.

"Oh, no…" said Mike in a weak voice that sounded a lot like William Shatner's. "My photoreceptors… They're… getting dark…" Mike made a sound like a record screeching and shut down entirely.

Crygor came to a dead stop in front of his granddaughter and Mike. "Penny!" he said angrily, his hands on his hips. "What did I just tell you not to do?"

"Um… not deactivate Mike?" she asked innocently, putting her arms behind her back to hide the screwdriver. She looked down and kicked the ground with her right foot.

Condensation had begun to form on Crygor's visor; he was pretty mad now. "Now whenever he comes back online, he will try to destroy us all!" Dr. Crygor held his arms above his head as he said this, overdramatically shaking them as an overdramatic representation of how cheesed he was at her.

"Jeez, Grandpa, you really need to calm down," said Penny. She reached into one of her lab coat's pockets and took out a small black device that looked like a car starter. She pressed a button on the device and suddenly, Dr. Crygor began to dance around the room while salsa music played loudly from inside his chest.

Penny came over to where Snake was and whispered to him, "Mommy and Daddy say that Grandpa shouldn't stress himself out so much, so when he was sleeping last night I reprogrammed his pacemaker." She smiled and proudly held up the device. "Now whenever he gets angry, I just press this button and he starts dancing."

The two of them stood there as they watched Crygor dancing around the garage. "Wait until I tell your parents about what you did to me, Penny!" he threatened, doing a pretty awesome-looking flip. He then came back down to the ground and slid on his knees, holding out his arms and crying "ARRRRRIBA!"

Penny looked up at Snake and made a face. "What happened to you?" she asked. "Why are you wearing a doggy's collar?"

"I don't want to talk about it," said Snake in his gruffest voice possible.

Taking a hint that Snake wasn't exactly the nicest guy in the world, Penny made her way back to the far side of the garage. Crygor twirled to where Snake was and he whispered "Take her with you, she's crazy!"

From the other end of the garage, Penny called to her grandfather, "Hey, Grandpa! Wanna see the modifications I made to my kitty?"

Crygor shuddered as he spun back towards his granddaughter.

* * *

><p>Sometime later, Snake and Penny were strapped into the Impala; the door of the subterranean garage opened and they drove out through a long dark tunnel to the surface.<p>

Once they were above ground, Snake, who was driving, had parked the car and was briefing Penny on his plan. "Alright," he said to her. "Seeing as how Luigi's in Missouri, we'll go there first, and then we'll head to California to get Mario."

"Oh, great," said Penny from the backseat, rolling her eyes. "Just what I needed; a road trip with a smelly old man with a lampshade on his head."

"Hey, you think I'm any happier about this arrangement than you are?" asked Snake, briefly looking at the girl as he started the car and drove towards the nearest interstate. "I'm only taking you with me because your grandpa thought you were too much of a handful."

That seemed to shut her up.

Hours passed as they sped down the interstate; Snake was dangerously bobbing and weaving from lane to lane as he struggled to see through the ridiculously small eyeholes of his Elizabethan collar. He seethed inside, thinking about how much he hated Wario for not only having to be his lackey, but that the skinflint wouldn't even give him decent health insurance, which had forced him to go see a veterinarian.

"So, how did you get that thing on your neck?" asked Penny with all of the innocence she could muster. The sound of the girl's voice metaphorically pulled Snake back into the real world and out of a violent revenge fantasy, where he was torturing a certain morbidly-obese political figure with a power drill and playing "We Built This City" by Starship.

"Huh?" He briefly looked over at her, feeling his hatred briefly disappearing. As much as he tried to hide it, Snake always loved children. That's why he got into the children's music industry in the first place, aside from the obvious fact that his house got wrecked and all that stuff.

His heart couldn't help but break every time he saw the smiling face of a child. They were so innocent, so precious. It was a shame they had to grow up and become adults.

"I said, how did you get that thing around your neck?"

Snake sighed. "Well, let's see: I got attacked by a flock of geese while on a helicopter ride, dragged through a pine forest and smashed through the walls of some buildings and_ then_ came the mousetraps."

Penny just sat there in the backseat, listening to Snake's tale of woe. "And then to top it off, Wario gave me a lousy medical plan and I had to end up going to a veterinarian!"

He could see from the rearview mirror that Penny was trying hard not to laugh at his story. "You can laugh if you want to, kid," said Snake, his voice full of sadness. "I think I need to laugh after all of the stuff I've been through for the last few years."

From the backseat, Snake could hear Penny begin to giggle wildly and pound the seat with her fist, laughing from Snake's story. The man joined in with her laughter, happy to forget about Wario for at least a moment.

When they had finished laughing, Snake briefly looked in the backseat and said to Penny, "I don't think we were ever properly introduced. My codename's Snake, but you can call me Dave if you'd like." He held out his hand for her.

"My name's Penny Crygor," said Penny cheerfully, shaking his hand and smiling. "And I want to be the world's greatest inventor, next to my grandpa of course. It's nice to meet you, Mr. Snake."

"Nice to meet you too, Penny."

A second later, the girl's face went pale. "Uh, Mr. Snake?"

"Yeah?"

"You'd better get back to driving, 'cause your about to hit a big truck!"

Snake spun around and looked out the windshield. He saw that a huge semi was barreling down the highway, straight for them. He violently turned the wheel and swerved out of the truck's path. The driver laid on his horn, shouting unheard obscenities at the Impala. Snake drove the car back into the right lane again and said to the girl in the backseat, "That could've been bad for both of us. Thanks, Penny."

"You're welcome, Mr. Snake."

Snake looked straight ahead at the highway before him (Well, as straight as he could through the collar's eyeholes). He sighed; he could feel some angsty thoughts coming upon him.

Every time he saw a child like Penny, he secretly wished that circumstances would have played out differently in his life; how he wished he could have had a normal life like all of those children he used to play for. He never had much of a childhood, being the fact that his training as a solider practically began the moment he learned to walk. No child should ever have to go through what he did.

He pulled himself out from his dream world; he could see his exit coming up. "Alright, Penny. We're about to make our first stop."


	5. Toilet Snake, Part Three

A/N: You know the song and dance. I don't own nothin', got it?

* * *

><p>"Hello. Welcome to Dor-Mart," said Luigi to a woman and her son who were entering the aforementioned retailer, which the author of this story swears on the advice of his lawyers bears no relation to Wal-Mart other than having a similar sounding name and an equally powerful ambition to rule the world by the end of the twenty-first century.<p>

The last few years had been particularly tough on Luigi. First, there was that crazy haunted mansion and then there was his disastrous experience as a contractor working for Gadd Cleaning Services, which provided little pay but lots of frustration. As a contractor for GCS, Luigi offered numerous cleaning services for people who were too lazy to get off of their rumps and do it themselves.

He had decided to finally hang up his Poltergust 3000 after he had been rudely assaulted three years ago by Solid Snake, who had drugged him and dragged him into some bushes for no apparent reason. He awoke hours later, finding himself in a cave where some hungry wolves were planning on having Bistecca alla Luigi for dinner. The embattled plumber escaped from the wolves and quit his job, choosing to sell himself out to Dor-Mart rather than have to deal with the exotic and dangerous life of a contractor anymore.

And so, this was the sad lot that Luigi had been cast; he now had to stand in front of the entrance of Dor-Mart every day, dressed in the retailer's standard red vest, blue shirt and red pants, greeting the assorted gaggle of burned-out hippies, Goths, rednecks and people with bad fashion sense as they entered the store. The pay was low and the hours were long and unfulfilling.

People went to Dor-Mart because they had been brainwashed by the president of Dor-Mart, a robot with Psycho Mantis' brain inside, into thinking that they were getting a good deal on their commodities. But behind the veneer of low prices and free puppy giveaways lurked something much more sinister. Besides the whole wanting to rule the planet thing, Dor-Mart purposefully shuffled their prices every week to make you think you were getting a good deal, put the cheaper items up on high shelves so you couldn't reach them (or sometimes in a pit full of cobras) and marketed processed hobo chunks as ground beef.

A large fellow who was dressed in motorcycle attire and sporting muscled, tattooed arms came into the store and Luigi said, "Good day, sir. Your vest looks very, uh, tattered. Yeah, tattered…"

The guy made a rude noise and pushed his way past Luigi. The Mario Brother could feel anger rising within him, but he quickly squelched it. Rather than opening a portal to the Negative Zone and beating the living crap out of the guy, he nodded his head, waved at the man and plastered a fake smile on his face.

He then looked up at the cameras on the ceiling and thought, _Keep smiling, 'cause they watch your every move._

Luigi suddenly felt very thirsty. He made his way to the other end of the store where the restrooms and the only water fountain were; Dor-Mart always put their restrooms and water fountains at the opposite ends of their stores to just to show the customers and employees how evil they were.

He stood over the water fountain, pressed the bar in the front and drank the water that came out of the spout. After he was done drinking, he started to walk back to the front of the store. Just then, he saw a strange sight, which was not an uncommon experience working at Dor-Mart: a tall man wearing something that looked like an upside down lampshade was holding the hand of a cute little red-headed girl.

Luigi's jaw hung agape and he could feel fear coursing through him. "Oh, no…" he said quietly as he put his hands on the sides of his head; his teeth began to loudly chatter together.

"All the stories were true…IT'S THE LIBERAL LAMPSHADE MEN THAT GLENN BECK WARNED US ABOUT! THEY'VE COME TO ENACT THEIR SINISTER PLOT TO TURN THE PENTAGON INTO THEIR PERSONAL MARTINI BAR!"

All the people in the store stood in place and looked at Luigi like he was crazy, but this was not the time to be standing around; the fate of the Pentagon was at stake here. The plumber metaphorically reached down into his frightened psyche and metaphorically gave it a spanking. He then metaphorically found his courage hiding behind his psyche and they both metaphorically took each other's hands and metaphorically shot through the murky smog that metaphorically represented Luigi's mind.

The plumber stood in the store, his fear replaced with a foolish notion to be a hero. He ran to the housewares section and picked up a two-by-four, running back to the main part of the store while the Superman Theme played on the speakers overhead.

He could see the lampshade man with the little girl and they seemed to be coming towards him. Luigi metaphorically steeled himself, getting ready to literally terminate the threat.

The girl and the lampshade guy were directly in front of him. The guy started to say something, but Luigi blocked it out, and smashed the man over the head with the plank, screaming, "DIE, LIBERAL LAMPSHADE MAN!" The board splintered into several pieces after contacting with the man's head and several shards flew around the immediate area, injuring several shoppers nearby.

Luigi stood heroically as he watched the lampshade man hit the ground. Then the little girl started to cry. Luigi looked down at her in the condescending, yet friendly way adults do to children and said, "Don't cry, little girl. I just saved America from the evil lampshade conspiracy!"

"You meanie!" she sobbed. "That's not a lampshade man; that's Mr. Snake!"

"Snake?" said the Mario Brother in a confused tone as he walked over to the man, who sat on the ground, his lampshaded head gyrating in a very Mortal Kombat-esque way.

"Luigi, you idiot," the familiar voice growled. "It's me, Snake!"

The plumber felt so confused right now. "Why are you wearing—?"

"Don't ask, please."

Luigi picked up a remnant of the two-by-four and hit Snake over the head again.

"ARRGHH!" screamed Snake. "WHAT DID YOU DO THAT FOR?!"

"That was for drugging me and throwing me in those bushes!"

Snake rubbed his sore head and then held out his hands apologetically. "Look, I was just trying to watch 24, okay?"

Luigi put his hands on his hips; an angry expression was on his face. "That still doesn't excuse what you did!"

"Sure it does," said Snake. "Due to the show's graphic violence, it indirectly influenced me to do that to you."

"I highly doubt that was the case," said Luigi unconvinced. "I still have teeth marks on my arms from when those wolves dragged me off, you know!"

"Oh, boo-hoo," said Snake, waving him off. He got to his feet and explained the whole situation about Wario's toilet and how he needed to find him and Mario in order to fix it.

"Sure, I'll go," said Luigi. "But first I have to check in with my supervisor, Mr. Smiliwitcz. Oh look, there he is now!" Luigi ran over to some guy with a giant smiley face for a head wearing the Dor-Mart uniform.

"Mr. Smiliwitcz, I have to go to fix the president's toilet in Washington. Could you give me a few days off?"

"Oh sure," said the smiley-faced guy in a happy voice. "You can take as long as you want, son. Just make sure to come back quick, now. Remember the Dor-Mart motto:"

Suddenly, Smiliwitcz's face turned bright red; a goatee grew around his mouth and two horns sprouted from the top of his head. He then said in a demonic voice, "'WE OWN YOUR SOUL!'"

"Mama mia!" Luigi took cover behind Snake and started shaking, unable to reach down and metaphorically do anything right now.

Smiliwitcz morphed back to his regular formed and waved. "Have fun, now!"

* * *

><p>Far away in Burbank, California, the elder Mario Brother was filming a commercial for Crappy's Pizza, the place where the crust was so hard, that you'd swear it was actually made from the earth's crust. And delivery was always guaranteed, unless you lived more than five feet away from the restaurant.<p>

Mario jumped in front of a backdrop of World 1-1 from the original Super Mario Brothers while an 8-bit version of the Mario theme played in the background. He jumped along as he read his lines from a teleprompter.

"WOO-HOO! It's-a me, Mario! You-a know, it's-a hard to rescue Princess Peach from Bowser on a—"

"CUT!" shouted a voice off-camera. Mario was so startled that he fell to the floor, facedown.

After picking himself up, dusting off his overalls and realigning his broken nose with his Gary Stu powers, he said in a Brooklyn accent devoid of any broken English, "What's the problem? I had a good momentum going there!"

"This isn't the scene I wanted!" growled the director, who was a fat and balding man with skin as greasy as the pepperoni on a Crappy's Pizza. "Bowser! Get out here! We need you in this take!"

On cue, the Koopa King lumbered out from his dressing room, a rock band of Koopas at his side playing the castle theme from Super Mario Brothers 3. Being such a devious, evil dude who had to always make a dramatic entrance, Bowser had hired a washed-up Koopa rock band to play some random Mario tune whenever he entered a room or building. It was a nice touch, but you would give all the geezers down at the old folk's home a heart attack with all that noise.

The director motioned with his hands to where he wanted Bowser. "Alright, Bowser," he said. "I want you to— "

Suddenly, a black Chevy Impala came smashing through the walls of the studio in a cool, Knight Rider-esque fashion. The driver, some guy wearing an upside down lampshade stepped out of the car, cursing loudly. He pulled the lampshade off of his head, threw it to the ground and made several holes in it with a 9mm.

"Snake—?" asked Mario.

The man looked at Mario as embarrassment made its dwelling on his face. "Oh, I guess I did have the right address after all…"

Mario cocked his head, his face filled with confusion. "Why were you—?"

"Please, don't ask me." said Snake in an annoyed voice.

Snake quickly regurgitated the twisted tail of toilet trouble in a timely manner and then Penny called from the car, "Uh, Mr. Snake? There's a weird smell in here…"

"Yeah," said Luigi. He sniffed the air. "Mmm… It actually smells kinda like White Castle…"

"You mean like sweaty armpits?" asked Snake.

"No, actually it kind of smells like— " Luigi was cut off as the car exploded into flames. Both the poor plumber and Penny were sent flying out of the Impala's front window, screaming. In a strange moment of heroics, Mario jumped up and caught his brother while Bowser stood where he was and caught Penny with his nasty clawed hands.

A moment later, the four Smashers and Penny stood dumbfounded, watching as flames shot upward and consumed the automobile. The guys doing the commercial were too busy filming the aforementioned carnage to stand dumbfounded.

A cameraman turned to the director. "Listen to this title for our new ad campaign, boss." He waved his hand theatrically. "Crappy's Pizza: We blow the competition to bits and pieces!"

The other people in the room were less than enthused. Turning to Snake, Bowser, Mario and Luigi, Penny asked them, "Now what are we gonna do?"

* * *

><p>Many days and many plot holes and inconsistencies later, Snake, Penny and the Mario Brothers somehow ended up back in Washington. The Mario Brothers had fixed President Wario's toilet, received a meager payment of twenty bucks from the skinflint-in-chief and were getting ready to leave. The president and the plumbers stood outside of the Presidential Bathroom.<p>

"Well, Mr. President," said Mario, "we fixed your toilet."

"What a relief!" said Wario. "No-a more using Dedede's bedroom for-a my business!"

At that moment, the vice president made a horrible discovery in his bedroom. "MAH CLOSET!" he shouted from somewhere in the White House. Wario chuckled quietly.

"What I was going to say, sir," said Mario, "is that we fixed your toilet, but there's a small problem that came up."

"What-a do you mean?" asked Wario.

The Mario Brothers led the president into the bathroom and Luigi pointed to the toilet. Wario could see that a white and black-striped king snake sat coiled on the seat, its tongue flickering out as it tasted the air, searching for prey.

"We don't have any idea how it got in here," said Mario shrugging helplessly, "but someone needs to get rid of it. King snakes are known to be very territorial little buggers."

"Yeah," said Luigi as he ran behind his brother to cower silently. "Snakes aren't our specialty."

Wario rubbed his chin as he thought for a moment. Then, an idea came to him. "I have-a just-a the man for the job-a…" he ran down the hall, laughing evilly as he ran to the kitchen. He reappeared a couple minutes later, pushing Solid Snake in front of him. He shoved the protesting man into the bathroom and locked the door.

"You boys may-a want-a run home," said Wario whispering. "Things-a could-a get mighty ugly." The Mario Brothers took Wario's advice and left the White House to head back to their crappy jobs and to get their privacy invaded by those grabby TSA guys at the airport.

Inside the bathroom, Snake quietly stepped forward toward the snake on the toilet, trying his best to walk as silently as he could without making too much movement. The snake's tongue flickered out, its black eyes watching the human's movement closely. Snake stood three feet away from the snake and slowly brought his hands down to grab it. Just then, the snake hissed and sprung up, coiling itself around Snake's neck.

For the next five minutes, the only sounds heard inside the bathroom were the screams of Snake, various profanities and a recitation of Samuel L. Jackson's key line from _Snakes on a Plane_.

Outside of the bathroom, Penny walked up to Wario and asked him, "Where's Mr. Snake? He's supposed to bring me back to Grandpa…"

"He'll-a be with-a you shortly," said Wario grinning mischievously. "I get-a the feeling that he's a little tied up at the moment..." The president began to laugh raucously as he held his sides.

Penny heard all of the sounds of struggling and bad language and asked Wario, "Is he trying to go to the potty?" Wario ignored her, laughing more.

Just then, the door opened and Snake stepped out. He had a drugged look on his face and around his neck, the king snake hung like a scarf, its head resting on his right arm. Snake smiled and lightly petted the reptile's head.

"You know, I don't know if it's because he tried to cut off my circulation or because of the lack of oxygen to my brain, but this fella ain't half bad."

He turned to Penny and said, "Come on, Penny. Let's get you to back to your grandpa."

He took her by the hand and tipped his headband to the president in a very un-Snakelike way. After bringing Penny back to her grandfather (and after Crygor and Snake shared some heated words over the wrecked car), Snake and the kingsnake were walking off into the sunset down Pennsylvania Avenue.

"I think I'm gonna name you Gilles, after that guy from that TV show I used to watch." said Snake to the snake, which was wrapped around his right arm. "You know, Gilles, this could be the start of a beautiful friend— ARRGGHHH!"

Gilles bit down on Snake's right hand. The man swore loudly, ripped the snake off of his hand and threw it to the ground. He then took out his 9mm and emptied four rounds into the reptile.

He looked down at the snake's lifeless form, shook his head and muttered, "Shortest friendship I've ever had."


	6. White House Party, Part One

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Smash Bros or Solid Snake. I do own a song in this chapter, however. If I owned Super Smash Brothers, the Snake Eater song wouldn't have been the instrumental version.

* * *

><p>It was a Saturday morning in western Maine. The sun had just begun to make its long journey across the heavens; its rays were shining through the hazy sky above. A family of rabbits emerged from their burrow and hopped through a forest below in search of food. A sleepy owl perched on a tree branch above and coughed loudly, spitting out an owl pellet that hit a sleeping black bear below.<p>

Snake stood on the long steel dock by his house and looked at everything around him. Every morning before most people woke up, Snake liked to come out here and admire the beauty of it all. He could hear the waves rolling off of the shore nearby and the sounds of birds singing in the woods nearby his cabin, welcoming the start of a new day.

He inhaled the fresh summer air. It was a great day to be alive.

The man was again dressed in his camouflage pajamas and pink bunny slippers. He reached for the holster at his side, pulled out his 9mm and fired at a crudely-drawn, cardboard effigy of Wario with horns and a really evil look on its face. He stepped off of the dock and walked to the effigy on the shore, which was riddled with hundreds of bullet holes.

He looked at the cutout and surveyed the newly-made hole. _Huh, right between the eyes,_ he thought. _Too bad I can't do that to the real Wario…_

He walked back to the dock and turned around to face the target. Since he was feeling lucky, he closed his eyes and fired the firearm.

His eyes shot open as he heard a woman scream. From the dock, he could see that a woman in a white bathrobe lay on the ground near his tool shed by the lake. He ran off the dock and approached the woman, flipping her over.

_Oh nuts, _he thought when he saw her face. It was that hot blonde that lived a couple houses down from him, that girl he had wanted to go out with for years who always rebuffed him. Seeing as how the woman had no pulse and had a nasty gunshot wound on the right side of her head, Snake concluded that she was dead.

But what would he do now? His fingerprints were on her neck and the bullet. No doubt he would end up going to jail and then the story of the crime would be retold by that old guy with the annoying voice on Dateline.

After a few minutes of thinking it over, Snake knew exactly what he had to do. He had to own up for his misdeed; he needed to do the noble thing, and that's exactly what he did. He grabbed the dead woman (Man, she was heavier than she looked) and chucked her corpse into the lake. He really hoped that some of those piranha-frogs lived in there now.

Putting his hands behind his back and whistling innocently, Snake walked back to his cabin. He turned the brand-new doorknob of his front door and began to step inside when one of those rabid locksmiths came out of nowhere. He was dressed in a blue baseball cap, had a long black beard, wild eyes and a white shirt and blue jeans; drool was running out of his mouth like a waterfall.

"Urrghh…. Need costumer feedback…"

Snake sighed disgustedly. He shot the locksmith in the gut and caught him as he was about to literally drop dead. He brought the corpse down gently and started whistling and calling for his dog.

"Frank! Frank!"

Around the corner came a three-year-old black and white furred Siberian husky. He panted loudly as he looked up at his owner.

"Frank, I've got a new chew toy for you," said Snake softly to the dog. Frank panted, putting his jaws on the corpse's arm and dragging him off to his doghouse.

Snake smiled and stepped inside his home. He had just bought the dog two weeks ago and was surprised how quickly it had come to accept him as his owner. Technically, Snake never bought the dog; he stole it from the Grouchington's house after he knocked them out/killed them and dumped their bodies into the lake. Since he had always had a thing for huskies, and had wanted a dog badly ever since Kirby ate his sleigh dogs four years ago, he took it upon himself to take their dog.

Snake took the blueberry coffeecake he had made yesterday out of the fridge and placed it on his kitchen counter. Getting a cup of Nicaragua's Disappointment, he took the coffeecake to his filthy sofa and turned his television on. It was almost time for that pundit guy's show that he liked on Fixed News, the most unreliable name in news.

Frank came running into the living room with one of the locksmith's tibia in his jaws. Snake smiled as the dog sat down on the floor and stared at the television while gnawing on the bone. As Snake looked at Frank chewing the bone, he couldn't help but get the feeling that the guys who wrote Criminal Minds were watching him from somewhere far away.

On the television, that annoying beep from 24 was playing as various images flashed across the screen. The White House, Capitol Hill, the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial briefly appeared. A video clip of obese New Yorkers walking in Times Square appeared next. Then, a photo of some guy wearing a tinfoil hat who was waving an American flag and holding a handgun appeared. This picture was then replaced by various cityscapes.

Then random audio clips of politicians reciting epic and inflammatory statements played in the background while photos of the Constitution, a statue of Thomas Jefferson and a poster of Uncle Sam appeared on screen.

Then, a woman off-screen said in a seductive voice, "What you are about to watch is the fusion of entertainment and conspiracy theories galore; hard-hitting journalism, mixed with right-wing propaganda. This is _Cut the Crap with Donkey Kong_." An awful-sounding rock song with stupid lyrics played in the background as the title card appeared.

The host of the show stood by a news desk. He was dressed in a black suit and his usual red tie. Behind him, big pictures of dead presidents and lots of TV screens were mounted on the walls of the studio.

"From the Charlie Sheen #Winning Building in downtown Los Angeles," said Donkey Kong in his usual overdramatic style. "This is _Cut the Crap with Donkey Kong_. I am Donkey Kong, your host. Rather than address the headlines, let's go to the boards."

Snake watched as DK walked to the right and came to two large chalkboards. One was covered with a bunch of pictures of Wario's friends and mentors, while on the other was a drawing of a tree in the center of the board with Wario's picture at the top. To the right of the tree were the names of Wario's closest friends and advisors and at the tree's roots there were pictures of famous radicals and Italian and French chefs from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

DK gestured towards the chalkboards. "Yesterday on my show, we were discussing how President Wario is the poster boy of the radical Marxist-Italian-Frenchist plot to control our nation's supply of garlic. He has shown where his loyalties lie by the implementation of his insidious six percent tax on garlic, as outlined in his Six-Six-Six Tax Plan."

Snake had been watching Donkey Kong since he had gotten this show on Fixed News a couple years ago and he still wasn't able to figure out what the point of the chalkboards were. Were the majority of Donkey Kong's audience schoolchildren, people with short attention spans or maybe did he just have a weird thing for visual aids? Was he trying to subconsciously tell the world that he really wanted to be a teacher and had missed out on his true calling in life?

Snake concluded that some things in life were just beyond human understanding, like why the Kardashians were considered celebrities.

Donkey Kong came up to the board with the drawing of the tree and continued his rant. "As you can see indicated on my Tree of Paranoia—"

What the ape had said was drowned out by the loud ringing of Snake's codec in his ear. Groaning, Snake got up from the couch and put his hand to his ear.

"Yes, sir?" said Snake in an icy voice.

"Snake, report-a to the White House," said Wario's gruff, nasally voice. "It's-a time for another mission. I'm-a sending transportation to get-a you."

Snake swallowed hard. "It isn't going to be a helicopter, is it?" asked the man, his voice like steel. "Because after what happened last time…"

"Oh-a no, Snake," said Wario. "I wouldn't-a dream of sending another helicopter." Snake swore he could hear Wario laughing quietly at the other end of the line. The communication then ended. Snake angrily threw off his clothes and dressed in his sneaking suit and headband. No sooner had he finished dressing, the doorbell rang.

Before heading to the front door, Snake shut off the television. Donkey Kong was doing that fake crying thing that he does when he wanted to elicit the viewer's sympathy. Snake now went to the door. Opening it, he could see two guys dressed in black suits and sunglasses standing on his porch.

They motioned for him to come with them and he followed them to the street out in front of his house, where a black limousine was parked. Some of Snake's geriatric neighbors had gathered out on their lawns and porches and were all staring. Snake rolled his eyes as both he and the two guys got into the limo.

_These old folks really need to do more jigsaw puzzles, _thought Snake as the car drove off.

* * *

><p>After a day on the road and a night in a fleabag motel in Atlantic City, Snake had finally arrived at Washington. The next morning, he stepped into the Oval Office, where Wario was talking to two tall French guys dressed in chef's clothes and hats.<p>

Snake was taken aback. _Gee, could Donkey Kong's crazy rants really be true after all…?_

The President saw the man standing in the doorway, so he said quietly to the two chefs, "We'll-a talk more about-a this tomorrow. I have-a company…"

The two men nodded. One of the men placed an envelope on the desk and said something in French to the other guy. The other guy nodded and they left the room, giving Snake looks that would have killed a normal man on their way out. Thankfully, Snake wasn't a normal man. After all, how normal was a guy who liked to incapacitate his neighbors and dump their bodies in a lake or kill a guy and give his corpse to his dog?

Anyway, Snake looked at the repulsive little man and said, "You called?"

"Ah, yes I did, Snake," said Wario. He quickly grabbed the envelope on the desk, which Snake could clearly see had the words 'Illegal Campaign Contributions' written on it and stuffed it into a desk drawer.

"Your new mission is—"

Before Wario could finish, a secret service agent came through the double-doors of the Oval Office. "Um, I'm sorry to interrupt you, Mr. President, but some packages have arrived for you." Behind the man two other agents appeared, each holding a very heavy-looking briefcase.

Wario held up one of his hands. "Hold on, Snake, this is-a important business."

The two guys dragged the briefcases over to Wario and dropped them on the desk. They stepped back, nodded to Wario and went with the other agent out of the room.

Snake could see that each briefcase had corporate insignias inscribed upon them. One read 'Goldman Sachs', the other 'ExxonMobil'. Wario rubbed his hands together in anticipation and opened the two briefcases, which were lined with many, many pictures of Benjamin Franklin.

The president sniffed the money and sighed happily. "I love-a the smell of bribes in-a the morning…" His mouth opened and a torrent of drool flowed out down his suit.

Snake impatiently cleared his throat. "Mr. President…?"

Suddenly, Wario snapped back to reality. Shaking his head, he reached into his breast pocket and took out a red handkerchief, using it to dry himself.

"I'm-a so sorry, Snake," the president apologized, grinning. "It's just-a the sight of-a the money…" He opened his mouth, making a moaning sound a la Homer Simpson.

Snake covered his face with his right hand and shook his head. _At least Nixon tried to hide his crookedness. But this guy…_

"Can we please get to my job?" asked the operative angrily. "Why is it every time I come here, you end up getting distracted?"

Wario smiled and pointed to his head, wordlessly blaming Roachie. Snake rolled his eyes, wordlessly annoyed by the man's antics.

"Come-a here, Snake," said Wario. Snake came up to the desk and the Skinflint-in-Chief opened a dresser drawer and held out an evil-looking black manila folder. He placed it on the desk.

"You see, Snake," started he. "Being that it's-a summer and all, the politicians and I have a little get-together here-a in Washington once a year where-a we throw-a a big barbecue, have-a some drinks and try-a to forget how much-a we hate each other. Every year, we-a hire a celebrity chef to grill-a for us and some musicians to entertain us from-a the monotony of-a the political scene. But-a you see, the chef and-a the entertainers for this year's party backed out at-a the last minute and now with-a the party three days away, there's-a no way we can get-a anybody else to come."

Wario was beginning to get an evil smile on his face. He turned to face Snake. "That's-a where you come in, Snake. I need-a you to go get-a the chef and-a the entertainers and 'retrieve' them for me." When Wario said the word "retrieve", he made quotation marks with his fingers.

"What do you mean by 'retrieve' them?" Snake asked in an extremely cynical tone of voice.

"Oh, you-a know," said Wario in a passive tone of voice. "Drugging, kidnapping. Stuff-a like that."

Snake sighed loudly as Wario opened the folder and handed him a page. "These are-a the persons in-a question."

Snake could see at the top of the page were two paper-clipped pictures. One showed Dr. Mario smiling and standing by a kettle grill and the other showed Fox, Falco and some bespectacled guy who looked at lot like Pit playing in a rock band at an arena.

Some years back, Dr. Mario became intensely dissatisfied with his regular job as a respected medical doctor and his weekend job as an infomercial quack that peddled pills made from ground-up dinosaur bones (which he marketed as a cure for arthritis). So he became one of those celebrity rehab guys. Things were going good, until Kirby had checked himself into rehab because he had ate his audience during a taping of his cooking show and had recently gone through a messy divorce with his wife Jigglypuff.

To make a long story short, Kirby ended up eating Dr. Mario, sending him into the nebulous pit that was his stomach. Somehow, Dr. Mario escaped from Kirby's gut using a box of Uncle Ben's rice and a bottle of Dr. Pepper he found floating around in there. He then went on a spiritual journey to try to forget all the nasty stuff he saw in there. He climbed the Himalayas and met Lucario, who lived in solitude in a monastery up there. Lucario taught him that the way to inner peace was through grilling stuff. Returning to the United States with this powerful revelation, Dr. Mario dedicated himself to a new life as both a doctor and barbecue aficionado.

Wario began to regurgitate this story to Snake, but Snake cut him off. "I know the story about Dr. Mario." He pointed to the picture of Fox, Falco and the guy with glasses. "But what's the story with these guys?"

"They are-a known as-a The Drunken Slurs, one of the biggest blues rock bands in-a the biz today," said Wario. "They are known for their number-one hit 'Loosen Up', as well as other—".

Just then, Wario jumped on top of his desk and started jumping around, playing air guitar and singing horribly off-key in a gargling, throaty voice.

When stuff gets-a bad,

When you feel-a sad,

When you're in-a bad mood,

I'll-a be your dude,

I'll-a be your dude.

That horrible urge to vomit that Snake had last month was coming back on him again. Wario's singing was so bad that he actually made Willow Smith, Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj sound pretty good. That awful grating voice, like knives in his ears…. He could feel the stomach acid rising within.

"Um, I hate to interrupt your jam session, Mr. President," said Snake in a very annoyed tone. "But I don't have a clue where I'm supposed to go to find these guys!"

Wario was too busy jumping up and down, playing his imaginary guitar and "singing" to pay attention. Snake groaned loudly, loaded a blank into his 9mm and fired at the ceiling.

"WAH!" cried Wario, falling on his well-padded posterior on the floor in front of his desk. His face grew furious. "Hey! I had a good-a thing going there!"

"Well, I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but I don't have a blasted idea where I'm supposed to go!"

Wario's expression brightened. He picked himself up off the ground and said to the man, "Don't-a worry about it, Snake. There's a plane waiting for you in-a the hanger. I've assigned Major Thomas Aholl to be-a your overseer for-a this mission. He'll explain all-a the fine details to you."

Snake nodded. "Alright. I guess I'd better get going then."

As Snake prepared to turn and leave the room, Wario felt Roachie doing a cardio workout in his brain, which caused the president to jump up and start doing said workout as well. Wario then grabbed some money out of the briefcases, threw it up into the air and began to "sing" another Drunken Slurs song.

There was no fighting it now. The bearded man ran out of the Oval Office and into a nearby bathroom, where he threw up violently.

After that disgusting experience, Snake cleaned up the horrible mess he had made and then ran as quickly as he could to the hanger. Normally, he wouldn't be in such a rush, but hearing Wario sing almost made him want to be locked in that room again, listening to "Firework" and The Dave Matthews Band instead.


	7. White House Party, Part Two

**Disclaimer**: As I've said before, I don't own Super Smash Brothers or the character of Solid Snake. All rights belong to Nintendo, Konami and Kojima Productions. I however do own The Drunken Slurs (It's so much fun to boss around fictional characters!).

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><p>Far above the land on which you and I live out our dull, boring existence flew a large black jumbo jet. It soared through the clouds like a massive eagle made of steel and metal, gazing down at the land below in search of a metal mouse to eat.<p>

Deep within the cargo bay of this airplane, Solid Snake was sitting down on the cold, hard metal floor. He was leaning against a row of crates and was reading a book with a drawing of a scorpion on the cover. He was so engrossed that he didn't see the man standing next to him.

"Snake?" said a man with an English accent. He was dressed in a black bomber's jacket and gray pants; his gray hair had been cut into a military buzz cut. "We are approaching our destination."

Snake was too busy reading to pay attention to what the other man was saying. The man standing next to Snake stuck a hand in front of the bearded man's face, attempting to bring him back to cold, hard reality; his hand was promptly and wordlessly pushed away.

"Snake, we are getting close to your first drop-off point," the man said, his voice growing impatient.

The book fell from Snake's hands and clattered on the steel deck. His face went ashen and his eyes bugged out. "Oh, no… They shot Alex!" He got up and pulled out his 9mm, intending to shoot the book. "Horowitz, you dirty—"

The man standing next to him laughed, stepped in front of Snake and picked up the book. He read the title and smiled. "Aren't you a little old to be reading this?"

Snake holstered his gun. He could see that the other man was Major Thomas Aholl, the guy who Wario had appointed as Snake's overseer for this particular mission. He saluted the man.

"Maybe, but it says on the back cover 'Ages 10 and up'. I'm over ten years old; therefore, I'm in the up category." He then thoughtfully stroked his chin. "Come to think of it, didn't I look like an old guy a few years back?"

"Let's not concern ourselves with such discontinuities now, Snake," said Major Aholl. "As I have told you before, we are nearing your first drop-off point. You do remember your mission objectives, right?"

Snake rummaged through one of the crates he had been leaning on, dug out a paratrooper's uniform and started putting it on. "Yeah, don't I have to infiltrate an evil organization that wants to kill the U.S. and the U.K.'s entire population of 12 to 14-year-olds by distributing a vaccine laced with cyanide?"

Major Aholl sighed and rolled his eyes. "No, Snake. You have to find The Drunken Slurs and Dr. Mario and 'retrieve' them for the President's barbecue party." When Aholl had said the word "retrieve," he had done the quotation mark thing with his fingers that Wario had done.

"What does 'everyone' keep doing 'this' for?" asked Snake, doing the fake quotation marks with his fingers.

"Please, don't make fun of me," said Major Aholl.

"Talley-ho!" said Snake in an exaggerated British accent, jumping around on an imaginary horse in a very OOCish way. "Biscuits, tea and crumpets!"

Major Aholl waved off Snake. "Would you please stop that? You're only going to end up offending our readers from the UK with that bollocks."

Snake stopped hopping around and stared at the major, feeling very confused. "What on earth are you talking about? What readers from the UK?"

Just then, a red light went on above the massive cargo door at the south end of the room. "Attention," said a pleasant female voice over the overhead loudspeakers. "We have now arrived at Cincinnati, Ohio. Please prepare to depart."

"There's no time to explain," said Aholl. "We've arrived at the first drop-off point!"

Snake had gone back to the crate and was still digging around. "Hey Major, where's the parachute?"

"I'm terribly sorry, Snake," said Major Aholl with a small smile. "But due to President Wario's budget cuts, this class of air transport cannot carry parachutes for the time being."

"You mean I have to make a thirty-thousand foot jump without a parachute?" asked an indignant Snake. "That's a suicide mission!"

Aholl shook his head. "If it makes you feel any better, just keep saying to yourself 'I'm Batman'." He then added in a softer voice, "You've got that perfect Batman voice, you know?"

"Are you coming on to me?"

"No, why would you think that?"

"You've got your hand on my shoulder."

"Oh," said the major, quickly removing his hand. "Sorry about that."

A moment after that incredibly awkward scene, the cargo door slowly opened, revealing a sea of clouds and the land below. Snake reluctantly stepped forward, Major Aholl standing behind him.

Snake was about to ask if it was a safe idea to jump out, but before he could say anything, the major roundhouse-kicked him in the butt and sent him flying out of the plane.

Snake let out a long scream as he fell through a massive cloud deck, scaring a group of angels that were holding a Texas Hold 'Em tournament. He could see that the ground was growing scarily closer to him as he fell further and further from the plane.

_Okay, okay. Aholl said that all I have to do is say 'I'm Batman' and everything'll be okay. Let's give it a shot…_

"I'M BATMAN!" screamed Snake loudly. He shook his head and closed his eyes. _No, that didn't come out right, _he thought. _I'd better try it again… _Snake opened his eyes and said in a low, growling voice, "I'm Batman."

Upon uttering 'I'm Batman', he could metaphorically feel his fear running away like the little sissy that it was. He then could metaphorically feel his elation metaphorically holding his fear into a headlock.

"WOO-HOO!" he cried happily. "I'VE CONQUERED MY FEAR OF FALLING! I CAN DO ANYTH—"

He was cut off as he smashed into the nose of a passing airplane.

As he slipped off of the aircraft and continued his descent, he could feel his fear metaphorically break free from his elation's headlock and metaphorically give elation a groin shot and metaphorically throw it onto the metaphorical mat that metaphorically represented Snake's brain. His fear then metaphorically sat down on a chair that metaphorically represented Snake's mind and took control of the man again.

With fear at the helm, Snake began to wig out as he saw the ground rapidly approaching him. "WAHHHGGGGHHH! I'MBATMANI'MBATMANI'MBATMANI'MBATMANI'MBATMAN!" He screamed in vain, trying to dislodge his fear, who had now metaphorically taken the shape of a deeply entrenched bureaucrat and wasn't budging from the seat of Snake's mind.

He was now about eighty feet from the ground. Thankfully, it looked like he was going to land in someone's swimming pool, which would hopefully cushion his fall. Unfortunately for Snake, the wind began to shift direction and he ended up landing on top of some sunbathing cougar and her nineteen-year-old boyfriend, who were sitting in lawn chairs at the side of the pool.

Fortunately for Snake, his natural body weight, coupled with the untold amounts of firearms and various weapons hidden in his sneaking suit, had killed the cougar and her boyfriend, thus causing him to avoid having to explain why he was falling from the sky in the first place.

He picked himself up off of the corpses a few minutes later after he recovered from the shock and pain of the impact. Being the gentleman that he was, Snake removed his paratrooper's outfit and draped it over the two bodies.

Before he had a chance to scratch his head and wonder how he survived, he could hear his codec buzzing. He put his hand to his ear.

"What an amazing drop, Snake!" exclaimed Major Aholl from the airplane far above. "I knew you could do it! Bloody awful what happened to those two people, though…"

"How on earth could you see what happened?" asked Snake.

"Erm, never you mind that," said the Major. "What you need to concern yourself with now is finding The Drunken Slurs."

"How am I going to find The Drunken Slurs?"

Aholl sighed. "Are you always this full of questions? Very well. The Drunken Slurs live in a house on his block where you have arrived. You'll know when you'll find them because you will hear someone playing music and will smell marijuana in the air. Aholl out."

Snake climbed over the fence in the yard and found himself on the main street. It was your stereotypical suburban neighborhood; kids rode down the street on roller skates and bicycles, plumbers were sleeping with other people's wives and gangs of sexagenarians who didn't have real lives anymore were making pitiful complaints about other people's arraignments of potted plants to the local Gestapo, uh, I mean the local homeowner's association.

Anyways, Snake walked around the neighborhood in a random haze, trying to find The Drunken Slurs' house. As he wandered about, a red Dodge Charger driven by a teenage girl came down the road and Snake could hear that she had a song blaring loudly on her radio. As he heard the song, his blood ran cold.

It was Firework by Katy Perry.

In Snake's mind, a repressed memory unseated his fear. He could remember that awful week he was locked in that room, forced to listen to that infernal song and every song ever performed by the Dave Matthews Band. What little childish innocence had remained in Snake had died that day along with a few hundred brain cells.

He then could feel irrationality knock the repressed memory out of the chair of his mind. Suddenly, Solid Snake snapped (say that ten times fast). He pulled out his much-neglected SOCOM and shot at a group of pesky sexagenarians who were on someone's lawn, complaining to Heinrich Himmler, uh, I mean, the head of the local homeowner's association. The sexagenarians dispersed, but Snake had felled five of them and pumped his fist in triumph.

He then shot an old guy who was going to get his morning paper. Then he whipped out a submachine gun (Man, did that sneaking suit have some deep pockets) and emptied it into a mailman, all the while screaming "TEACH ME ABOUT SELF-ESTEEM, WILL YOU YOU (insert various bleeping sounds here)IN' SONG!"

As Snake stood over the dying mailman, ready to shoot some skateboarding kid, the codec rang. "I'LL GET YOU IN A MINUTE!" he screamed to the boy.

He put a hand to his ear. "Snake, what's going on down there? Why are you indiscriminately shooting and killing pedestrians?"

"Wait a minute," said Snake as reality metaphorically unseated his irrationality. "You mean this isn't Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2?"

"No, Snake," said Aholl in a very annoyed voice. "This is real life. Well, not really. But anyway, you're looking for The Drunken Slurs and you have to kidnap, uh, I mean, 'retrieve' them, for Wario's barbecue party."

"Gotcha. Sorry 'bout what happened. It just… that song." Snake shuddered from even thinking about it.

"You'd better get rid of those bodies," said Major Aholl, choosing to ignore Snake's apology. "The BAU has eyes everywhere."

Taking the Major's advice, Snake grabbed the bodies of the slain pedestrians and threw them down a sewer. He was holding the body of the mailman and was ready to throw it down when a black van slowly drove through the neighborhood. Snake's eyes widened as he saw the letters 'BAU' written in white on the side of the van.

Quickly throwing the body down the sewer and putting the manhole cover back on, Snake faked a smile and waved at the van. From the driver and passenger seats, Rossi and Hotchner pointed to their eyes and then to Snake. The bearded man swallowed hard and wiped his brow in relief after the van had passed him.

He continued wandering about the neighborhood until he stopped in front of a fancy, two-story house. It wasn't the house's good looks that had stopped him; there was an unusual odor floating in air, seeming to come from the foundation of the house.

Snake couldn't quite put his finger on what exactly it was. It smelled kind of like a mixture of fresh-cut grass, burnt popcorn and the stockroom at a Barnes and Noble bookstore. It was an intoxicating but awful aroma. For a moment, Snake swore he could see daisies floating through the air and some really cool spiraling colors.

Then he heard a sound. At first, he thought it was a sitar, but then he could hear that it was someone playing an electric guitar. The sound seemed to drift up from the lower level of the house. Snake went up the house's driveway and found a small window at the base of the house. He got down on his belly and looked in the window, which seemed to look into the basement of the house.

Down there, he could see Fox McCloud playing an electric guitar, Falco Lombardi slapping a bass and some nerdy-looking guy with frizzy hair playing drums.

This was the place.

He decided it was time to call the Major. "Major Aholl? I've arrived at my destination. What do I do now?"

"Did you have to call me right now, Snake?" asked the major in an annoyed voice. "I was just getting ready to watch _Casino Royale_."

"Man, is that a good one," said Snake fondly.

"I don't know how I feel about a blonde James Bond though…"

"Trust me, once you see that chase scene where Bond and some guy duke it out in a construction site, his hair color won't matter anymore."

"Well, when you put it that way…"

"'Nuff said. Anyway, I found The Drunken Slurs. What do I do now?"


	8. White House Party, Part Three

A/N: This chapter was once part of Chapter Seven, but I split it up to keep you, dear reader, from totally going nuts. I'm a nice guy like that. ;)

**Disclaimer: As I've stated previously, I do not own Smash Bros. If I did, I would sleep upon piles of money instead of in my bed. Plus, I'd be a total chick magnet. So, no; I don't own Smash Bros, Solid Snake or Star Fox. I do, however, own the song 'Grown So Furry'.**

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><p>Down in the basement, Fox McCloud played a mournful blues riff on his guitar and sung in a stereotypical mournful blues voice. He was also doing that thing in blues where they have to say stuff two times for some reason but no one complains because it sounds cool. Falco and that nerdy guy who looked a lot like Pit were taking a break, smoking… something and watching <em>Inception <em>on a wide-screen TV.

I've grown so furry,

My baby she don't love me no more.

I've grown so furry,

My baby she don't love me no more.

When I get up in the mornin,'

I can't even find my feet.

When I get up in the mornin,'—

Just then, Fox could hear his wife calling for him at the top of the basement steps. Sighing angrily, he stopped playing and walked up to a nearby stand and placed his guitar on it.

Fox had gained a deep appreciation for music at an early age (Read: his parents forced him into it from the moment he could stand on two feet). His father, James McCloud, had not only been the leader of the original Star Fox team, but he was also the lead guitarist/vocalist for Exclamation Mark and The Exclamatrons.

After James (Who was also known as '!') died at the hands of the mad scientist/insidious music mogul Dr. Luther 'Jazz-Hands' Andross and from the farts of his former bassist Pigma Dengar, Fox had dedicated his life to saving music from mediocrity and Justin Bieber.

He trudged up the steps, muttering angrily to himself. At the top of the steps, he said to his wife "What's going on?"

"There's some old British guy at the door," explained Krystal as she led her husband to the front door. "I think he's selling something."

Fox and Krystal came to the front door, where Major Aholl stood. Behind him, stood a collapsible plastic crate filled with a bunch of stuff that looked like it had been stolen from the drug aisle at Dor-Mart.

"Hello, sir," said Aholl with all of the class of an English gentleman. "I was wondering if I could take a moment of your day to talk to you about hair care."

"Hair care?" asked Fox, tilting his head sideways. "I don't have any hair, just fur."

"I realize that you do not have hair _per se_, good sir," said Aholl, unfazed. "But I have some products here that can help you maintain your lush, full, sensuous body of fur."

Fox cocked a brow in confusion at the last statement the major had made and then crossed his arms, looking very bored and angry.

Aholl held up a purple bottle of some kind of conditioner. "This product is called—"

He was cut off by the sound of glass breaking inside the house. Within a second, Snake stood in the living room behind Fox and Krystal, bleeding from various cuts. Aholl could see a large hole in the glass door that led to the patio. Krystal and Fox both stood with mouths open wide as they stared at the injured man who was bleeding all over their pristine, white carpet.

"YOU BLOODY IJIT!" shouted an indignant Aholl, throwing the bottle of conditioner at Snake's head, which in turn bounced off and made a hole in some nearby windows. "YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO WAIT UNTIL I GAVE THE SIGNAL AND THEN GO THROUGH THE DOGGIE DOOR!"

"Uh, a little problem came up…" said Snake quietly. He turned around and showed the homeowners and the major the pit bull hanging off of his buttocks. Fox began to reach for his blaster when he was suddenly rendered unconscious by Aholl's fist to the back of his head. Before Krystal could respond, she too was knocked out by forty pounds of flying pit bull.

A minute later, the major and the man stood over the bodies of the two foxes and the unconscious dog. Aholl glared angrily at Snake, his face turning as red as Hayley Williams' hair. "WHAT IS BLOODY WRONG WITH YOU, YOU—"

"Mom? Dad?" said a young voice. Both men turned and saw a young fox with blue and white mottled fur standing at a staircase leading to the second floor of the house. He gave both men a horrified look as he saw his parents on the floor.

"What did you—"

He was cut off when a tranquilizer dart hit him in the neck. Within moments, he joined his parents and the dog in dreamland.

Snake looked over at Aholl, who was holding a blowgun, and gave him a thumbs-up.

"Now you need to go down to the basement and 'retrieve' the other two," said Aholl quietly, making quotation marks with his fingers again.

"Okay," said Snake, making the aforementioned quotation marks as well.

Snake began to slink away toward the nearby basement stairs, when Aholl came up to him and said, "Wait, Snake. If you want to get the other two, you're going to need 'this.'" After making more fake quotation marks, Aholl pulled a small red can out of his jacket and handed to Snake.

The operative studied the can. "Pomade? I haven't used this stuff since the '80s…"

Snake was suddenly overcome by a flashback of a mission he went on when he was sixteen years old. He was driving down a New Mexico highway in a red Corvette; he was wearing black sunglasses, a green muscle shirt and he had his hair styled like Mel Gibson's in _Mad Max_. Rick Astley boomed loud on his radio as he used an uzi in his right hand to gun down a group of drug smugglers crossing over the border. Ah, those were the days…

Aholl smacked Snake on the forehead, unfortunately snapping him back to the bleak present. "That isn't for you, you divvy. You have to use it to knock out those other two fellows down in the basement."

"You want me to knock those guys out with a can of hair dressing?" asked Snake incredulously. "How am I supposed to do that?"

"I don't know," said Aholl shrugging. "If you could blow up that Raven fellow's tank with just hand grenades, I think you could come up with some idea of using the pomade to 'retrieve' those two for the president."

Snake quietly descended the basement stairs, complaining to himself about why everyone had to always bring up his role as a government lackey or the blowing-up-Vulcan-Raven's-tank thing. Why couldn't they talk about his career as a musician or his role as painter and PBS regular Bob Ross in the Bob Ross biopic _Happy Little Trees _instead? There was much more to his life than just killing people.

Pushing that matter to the side for the moment, Snake continued to quietly make his way down the basement stairs. As he came closer to the bottom, the air became thick and clouded and smelled of that odd odor he had caught a whiff of outside. He also thought he could hear a sound coming from the basement, which sounded a lot like somebody playing "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida," but as he got closer to the bottom, he could hear it was just two guys laughing.

Disappointed, Snake made his way further down. Just then, a demonic Chibi-Snake with sharp fangs and yellow eyes materialized behind him and kicked him in the butt, knocking him down the stairs. Chibi-Snake laughed evilly and then returned to whatever infernal realm he came from (It was called New Jersey).

Snake fell down the four steps he still had left to reach the bottom and landed on the ground quietly just because he's Solid Snake and could theoretically destroy Steven Seagal with his mind or make a woman pregnant by just looking at her (The Mainstream Media won't admit it, but that's really why America's population has increased so much in the last few years).

Getting up off of the cold, hard, unloving, uncaring, ungenerous and just plain antisocial basement floor, Snake took a quick survey of his surroundings; the basement was decorated in the style that postmodern artists refer to as 'Aries Headbutting Tom Cruise in the Gut in the Time of the Internet Meme'. It was filled with hundreds of cardboard boxes, where entire civilizations of cockroaches made their homes and plotted vengeance against humanity for some reason. There were also plaques mounted on the support pillars that had various meaningless quotes that sounded like they were taken from either a fortune cookie or an episode of Criminal Minds.

There was some smoke in the air, but in some weird, physics-defying way, it actually was thinner down in the basement than it was on the way down.

Over in an obscure corner, Falco and that other guy were sitting on a burgundy leather sofa, watching _Inception_ on a wide-screen television. They both were smoking… something and were laughing raucously. The nerdy guy got up and said in a slurred voice, "Hey, Falco! Look at me, I'm that guy from _Titanic_ falling in slow motion!"

Snake got down on his belly and crawled behind the sofa. Now would be the perfect time to strike. He felt around in his pockets, but was unable to find the can of pomade. He cursed silently. _It must have fallen out when I fell down the stairs…_

"Hey, Falco!" Snake could hear excitement in the nerdy Pit-like fellow's voice. "Look at this weird thing I found!"

Snake quickly took a peek at what was unfolding; the guy was holding the can of pomade and Falco got up from the couch and staggered over to his buddy.

He opened the lid of the can and both of them looked at the white stuff inside. The Pit-like guy stuck two fingers into the gunk, pulled some out, sniffed it and then put it in his mouth; he licked his lips.

"Mmmm…. Man, that stuff is thick and freaky!" Inspiration appeared on his face like a zit before prom night. "Thick… Freaky…. Thickfreakness! That's it! HEY, FOX! I'VE GOT THE NAME FOR OUR NEXT ALBUM!"

Now was the moment. Snake jumped up from behind the sofa, rocketing through the air like an early dream of mankind and knocked the two numbskulls' heads together, knocking them out cold. Standing in triumph over the two unconscious idiots, Snake bent over, put the lid back on the pomade and put it in one of his pockets.

He then picked up Falco and the other guy's bodies, slung them over his shoulders and carried them up the stairs, grinning as he told Major Aholl, "I guess that pomade did really work after all, Major."

Aholl seemed as pleased as punch. In fact, at that very moment he was drinking some punch he stole from Fox and Krystal's refrigerator. "Brilliant job, Snake!" He put his punch down, pulled out a large black garbage bag from one of his jacket's pockets and proceeded to throw Fox, Falco and that Pit-like guy into the bag. He slung the bag over his shoulder and started toward the front door.

Snake sat on a couch in the living room, looking at Krystal, her and Fox's son and the pit bull on the floor. He shook his head and sighed.

"What's wrong, Snake?" asked Aholl turning around, looking genuinely concerned.

Snake looked at Aholl and began to launch into one of those boring yet philosophical rants that characters from Metal Gear have a bad habit of getting into.

"Is this really right, Major?" asked Snake. "Is it right to break into people's homes and kidnap them just because the President of the United States wants them to perform at some sick party? Is that what the Founders of this nation envisioned? Am I just a monster to go along with Wario's games? Shouldn't I just flee for Aruba, dye my hair blonde and change my name to Bubba? Who am I kidding? I'm just a pawn in some fat guy's twisted chess game. And M. Night Shyamalan tricked me. That guy really was dead in that movie from the beginning!"

He brought his fist down on a glass coffee table and shattered it, thus causing more property damage he would likely have to pay for later and even more personal injury to himself. "Aw, nuts…"

"Come on, Snake," said Aholl, beckoning him with his free hand. "We can't stay here debating morality all day; we can do that on the plane. I also just downloaded _The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension_ and _Jumpin' Jack Flash_. We could watch them on the way to the next drop-off point."

Snake grunted. "I think I'd rather die…" He felt around in his pockets for his box of suicide pills, but couldn't find it.

"Looking for these?" asked Aholl tauntingly. He held out a small pillbox that had the words 'Death-Rite-Now' written on it.

"Why, you…" Snake bolted up from the sofa and chased Aholl out of the house.


	9. White House Party, Part Four

A/N: Okay, dudes and dudettes; it's time for me to do my legal spiel once again *glances over at attorneys holding guns to his head*:

I don't own Super Smash Brothers, Solid Snake or anybody mentioned in this story. If I owned SSB, Dr. Mario would be in Brawl. I'm still mad that Nintendo didn't put him in… I do however own the music of The Drunken Slurs, a nonexistent band I created in my mind two months ago (Two months ago being last June, seeing as how this chapter was completed in August of last year).

~Due to some purposeful misspellings, crackficish elements and Dean Koontzisms, reader discretion is advised.~

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><p>The sun stood at its highest point in the sky, gazing down upon an arid land of sand. A bundle of tumbleweed rolled down a desolate Arizona highway and then rolled backwards, jumped onto some guy's windshield and made him get into a car accident. An old man sat in front of a run-down gas station, playing a song on a resonator guitar that reflected the humid atmospheric conditions.<p>

A large truck rolled down the road, carrying a bunch of barbeque supplies, cages full of squawking chickens, some guy named Felipe and a sleeping Solid Snake in its trailer. Snake had been happy to have fallen asleep; he was more than eager to forget why his life sucked so much and to spend at least a little while without having to think about those two awful movies the major had forced him to watch.

Suddenly, Snake's codec rang in his ears, startling the man from a dream he was having about a mission he went on in 1995. "AHHH!" he shouted. "THE TRUCK HAVE STARTED TO MOVE!" Filipe jumped up and ran behind a chicken cage, afraid that the operative was that wolf-man who had slaughtered his family's goats back in his village.

Snake put his hand to his ear and said groggily, "Why'd you have to wake me up, Major? I was back in the time of the Macarena, Wario wasn't president and the economy was a whole lot better than it is now."

"Well, I'm sorry to interrupt your good time," said Aholl sarcastically, "but my scanners show that you have arrived at Dr. Mario's Barbecue Compound."

"Mmm," said a pleasant female voice on the same frequency. "I could sure go for some barbecue right about now…"

"Who are you?" asked Snake.

"Oh, me?" said the woman. "I guess we were never properly introduced. I'm Dr. Kent, but you can call me Heli-Doctor."

"Oh, right," said the operative, realization hitting him like a drunken semi-driver. "You're that hot nurse who looks a lot like Jackie Kennedy who treated those cuts and that dog bite I got at Fox's house."

Heli-Doctor laughed, obviously flattered. "Oh, stop it."

"No, really," said Snake, chuckling; he was glad to actually be having some fun for once. "You're smokin' like Old Faithful. I've got to take you out for dinner sometime."

"Do you always talk to the ladies like this?" said Heli-Doctor in a playful voice.

"Doc, I can speak six languages, but the one I speak the best is the language of love."

Dr. Kent laughed more at the end of the line. Aholl cleared his throat, obviously embarrassed and feeling symptoms of Irritable Male Syndrome coming on him.

"If you two are done flirting," said an annoyed Aholl, "Snake has a mission that he needs to complete. I don't exactly cherish the thought of what will happen to us if we don't get Dr. Mario and The Drunken Slurs back to Washington in a couple of days…" The man shuddered. "I can't stand the thought of having to listen to that Willow Smith album again…"

Just then, a loud metallic screeching noise was heard as two burly, hairy dudes threw open the doors of the trailer. Sensing that danger was imminent, Snake used his incredible sneaking abilities to quickly dart into a shadowy corner. He stood there in silence as he watched the two men enter the trailer.

"I feel asleep!" said one of the men as he lifted up a case full of barbecue forks.

"Don't ya mean 'I feel sleepy'?" asked the second guy gruffly as he picked up a chicken cage and carried it outside.

"Oh, yeah," said the first guy, carrying the fork case out of the trailer. "I guess I was playing that old NES game for too long last night…"

Snake stood quietly in his corner, dozens of makeshift plans buzzing in his brain like flies on a pile of… uh, you know. Should he wait for the two to come back in? Should he lock them in the trailer? Should he throw a flashbang and make a run for it? So many questions, so little answers; it was just like an episode of Lost.

As he stood there debating his strategy in the metaphorical war room of his mind, one of the hairy guys waddled up the trailer's cargo ramp. At the top of the ramp, the muscle-bond man came to a sudden stop; he could see something from the corner of his eye in a very Dean Koontz-ish way.

An exclamation mark then appeared above Snake's head and a metaphorical alarm went off in his brain, signaling to him the already obvious fact that he had been spotted.

"Hey, Barry!" shouted the man. "There's some guy in here!"

That stupid exclamation mark kept reappearing over Snake's head and that alarm was ringing nonstop in his mind; it was enough to drive a man mad.

Then, Solid Snake snapped; in a momentous fit of rage, he grabbed the exclamation mark and used it to bludgeon the hairy guy into that blessed place between life, death and MTV. Within a moment, the second man appeared at the base of the ramp with a malevolent look on his face and a tire iron in his hand.

Tentatively stepping up the ramp, he called out in a voice that dripped of bravado, "Alright buddy, come on out and play. I won't hurt ya… too badly!" Chuckling, he entered the trailer, where he could see his friend passed out on the floor with a grievous head wound.

"What the…?"

He was greeted by a flash of light and Solid Snake's fist, which immediately sent him to a high school reunion with the steel floor of the trailer.

After ceremoniously dragging the two men's unconscious forms behind some miscellaneous barbecue supplies, Snake silently crept out of the trailer into the hot Arizonan sun. Felipe still cowered behind his chicken cage, praying that the crazy wolf-man who talked to himself and brutalized the other two men wouldn't find him.

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><p>Under the hot, late-afternoon sun, Dr. Mario stood behind a large kettle grill, where he was basting a rack of ribs with his special psychedelic barbecue sauce which was so hot that it would make you see the pits of hell itself.<p>

The good doctor was standing in a wide, arid field. In the foreground behind him stood several hundred unmanned barbecues; each one was loaded with charcoal and was sending steady streams of smoke up into the ozone layer. However, they weren't cooking anything at all; the only reason they were going was because Dr. Mario liked to piss off the EPA and he had some weird fetish with fire and smoke.

Dr. Mario sighed happily as he gave the ribs his patented 'poke test' and put his stethoscope on them to check for doneness. Meeting Lucario up on that mountain had saved his life; after escaping from Kirby's stomach and seeing all of the unspeakable things he saw in there, he needed to find some avenue to escape from the terrors he witnessed.

And that avenue was grilling (Handfuls of prescription drugs helped as well). Grilling was the answer to all of life's problems. If those guys at the U.N. and in the Middle East started grilling stuff, all of humanity could finally find some common ground and there wouldn't be any need for bad stuff like war, terrorism or Christina Aguilera screwing up The Star-Spangled Banner.

Grilling was the key to inner peace and Dr. Mario was high priest of the Church of Grillentology. It was his goal in life to be the prophet of Grillentology, to spread the word of barbecue to a world obsessed with deep frying, twice-baking and… _Whoa, that must be that cocktail of prescription drugs kicking in_, thought Dr. Mario as he placed the ribs on a platter and carried them to a nearby counter he had set up.

"Let's see how we did," he said, grabbing a barbecue fork and a carving knife. He carved a piece off of the ribs and saw that it was just the way he liked it: raw, bloody and probably swarming with tapeworm larvae.

"Alright, guys!" he called to his film crew. "It's time to dig in!" Dr. Mario's film crew were suck-ups who felt the need to always be included in the final shot of each episode where they would eat the stuff that he had grilled. Dr. Mario didn't want to be bothered having to feature them, but after receiving some angry letters from the film crew's union and being hit repeatedly with a blunt instrument, he was more than willing to go along with their demands.

Dr. Mario was carving up the ribs and wondering why the film crew hadn't swarmed upon him like the vermin they were. But then, he had one of those Dean Koontz moments where he could see from the corner of his eye the gaffer, who was passed out in front of the white tents the good doctor forced his employees to sleep in while he slept in luxury in an air-conditioned shack nearby.

Dr. Mario looked around the set and could see that the entire crew was passed out for some reason. Was it heatstroke or something else of a preternatural nature? He got his answer when a gloved hand came over his mouth. In an incredible display of his mastery of Shaq Fu, the doctor bit down on the hand and broke free from his attacker's grasp.

Turning around, he could see that it was Solid Snake, who was now clutching his hand and cursing a blue streak. "Snake?" asked the doctor, bewildered. "What are you doing out here?"

Once he had gotten control of his pain and metaphorically washed his mouth out with soap, Snake said, "I've come to 'retrieve' you for Wario's barbecue party." When Snake said the word "retrieve", he made quotation marks with his fingers and rolled his eyes.

Doctor Mario's face grew angry; he put down his right foot, which was housed securely within the comfortable confines of a Rockport boot. For some reason, he started talking like they do in poorly-dubbed martial arts movies where the words don't match the guy's lips.

"I will not follow you to Washington, Solid Snake. Wario has dishonored me greatly by refusing to send me a Christmahanukkwanzaa card. What kind of person doesn't send you a card on a holiday, anyways? Someone who doesn't care, that's who! To barbecue at his party would bring great dishonor upon me. My master Lucario would be very ashamed if I did such a thing…"

Ten minutes later…

Dr. Mario was still ranting, but he was starting to run out of gas. "…You'll have to fight me if you want me to go… to Washington…"

"You know, Dr. Mario," said Snake, who was feeling just as worn out as Dr. Mario himself was, "if you ever get sick of the whole barbecue thing, I could call Kojima and get him to put you in the next Metal Gear game, 'cause you sure don't know how to shut up!"

"I'll keep it in mind…" said Dr. Mario, panting from exhaustion. "Now prepare to die!"

He pulled out a can of Red Bull and chugged the whole thing down. After standing in place for a minute, he looked at his back and groaned angrily. "Aw, for the love of… where are my wings?! That's it! I'm so suing for false advertisement!"

Feeling a sudden jolt of energy a moment later from the drink and some pep pills he had popped earlier, he whipped his stethoscope off of his neck, twirled it around like a pair of nunchuks and let out a bunch of karate screams. Snake prepared for the coming combat by positioning himself in some silly-sounding fighting stance that Master Miller had taught him years back.

But before the battle could begin, the sky suddenly became unnaturally black and the immediate area looked like it was on fire for no apparent reason. Snake and Dr. Mario started looking around because it was what bad guys want their unsuspecting victims to do before they deal that one fell swoop crap.

A horrible screaming sound rang throughout the field and then Tabuu, also known as that bald naked guy made of water with butterfly wings who likes to beat the living crap out of you in the Subspace Emissary, materialized in front of the two men.

Snake's eyes grew wide as he stared up at the monstrous being. Dr. Mario's face filled with terror; he threw a handful of pills into his mouth.


	10. White House Party, Part Five

A/N: Here we are once again, people. Where we last left off, Snake went to Arizona to "retrieve" Dr. Mario for Wario's barbecue party. But now Tabuu has entered the picture… oy vey, things could get quite ugly…

Anyhow, it's time once again for le spiel:

I don't own Super Smash Brothers, Solid Snake or any of the characters featured in this story. I merely lured them into my house with the smell of home cooking and have them locked in my basement. I do however own The Drunken Slurs (A shameless sort of parody of The Black Keys and Radio Moscow, who are two of the greatest bands in existence today IMHO) and two Druken Slurs songs that appear in this chapter.

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><p>Tabuu's wings beat with a thunderous sound as he boomed, "SOLID SNAKE! YOU SHALL NOT TAKE DR. MARIO TO WARIO'S BARBECUE PARTY, BECAUSE I WANT TO BRING HIM TO SUBSPACE'S BARBECUE PARTY!" He laughed in the stereotypical villain-ish way, because, you know, he was a stereotypical villain dude.<p>

Snake pulled out his SOCOM as some heroic, cinematic music played from some unseen speaker somewhere. He trained his gun on the being and said, "No deal, Tabuu. Dr. Mario's coming with me and nothing in heaven or hell is going to stop me from getting him to back to Washington."

Snake looked around the area and cursed silently. He had hoped that Konami had sent some covert script writers to write down that incredibly epic statement he just made.

Tabuu slumped his shoulders and then moaned in a very unTabuu-like way, "Awww… Come on, Snake. The Primids are gonna kill me if I go back to Subspace empty handed…"

"Sorry," said Snake, his voice as cold as steel, "but I don't make deals with interdimensional megalomaniacs."

Upon hearing these words, Tabuu's face contorted into a grimace of pure hatred and his head grew as large as Rose O'Donnell's mouth. Once his head had pretty much engulfed most of his watery nekkidness, he opened wide his cavernous maw and roared in a voice that would have even sent Chuck Norris running in terror, "THEN YOU SHALL DIE!"

Then all of a sudden, the Blue Falcon came out of nowhere and Captain Falcon, F-Zero champion, Olympic track and field superstar and former U.S. Ambassador to Brazil, jumped out, looking as heroic and anime-like as ever. A really epic anime theme song boomed from the speakers of his racer.

Captain Falcon flew towards the ground in slow motion, just to show how cool he was. Once his feet made contact with terra firma, he ran in front of Snake and Dr. Mario.

"Stand back, you two!" he shouted in his most macho voice possible. "I'll take care of Tabuu!" Captain Falcon then beckoned to the billowing blue behemoth with his hand. "Come on!"

Tabuu was none too happy about this new wrinkle in the sweater that symbolically represented his plans. His face grew into a form so hideous, it could not even be described in words because if it was described, your computer/mobile device's screen would crack and your parents would make you spend your college fund and/or life savings having it repaired.

The being opened his cavernous maw and bellowed, "WATASHI WA SHINEN… SHINENNNZUUUU!"

At this point, most men would have ran away screaming for a maternal figure, but Captain Falcon was a real man. And if Masaru Daimon from Digimon Savers taught us anything, it's that a real man never backs down from a fight.

The real man jumped high in the air, his helmet flying off because of the sheer epicness of the moment and he cried "FALCON PUNNNNNCH!" He extended his right fist, which burst into flames of holy frickfire, and brought it down hard on Tabuu's giant forehead.

When Captain Falcon's fist connected, there was a momentous explosion of fire and water and a massive wave of light engulfed the surrounding area. For no reason, Dr. Mario screamed "CHOP THEM HOT DOGS! Uh, I mean, CAPTAIN FALCON!"

Tabuu let out a baneful scream of death, defeat and disappointment that he forgot to send his mom flowers for Mother's Day as he shattered into a million pieces and was swallowed up by the light. Captain Falcon gave Snake and Dr. Mario an epic stare as the light engulfed him as well, but the other two men were unable to see his face because it was so bright and if they had seen his face, they would have either died from the awesomeness of it all or would have gotten a yeast infection.

And then just like that, the bright light winked out of existence and the awesome insert/theme song stopped playing. Snake bent over and picked up Captain Falcon's helmet, tears running down his face.

"That brave man…" he said, his voice cracking in an uncharacteristic way that would make a Smash Brothers/Metal Gear Solid purist cringe in disgust if this wasn't supposed to be a humor fic. "He gave it all up to save us…"

Dr. Mario came over to Snake and was going to say something of a motivational nature, when suddenly Captain Falcon dropped down from the sky and landed squarely on his feet in front of the two men, just because he was too cool to stay dead. His awesome face was obscured by one of those blurry boxes they use on COPS to hide stuff that can't be shown on network television.

"Thanks for holding on to my helmet, Snake," said Captain Falcon as he took the aforementioned object from the operative and put it on. Part Eight from "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" by Pink Floyd played as he walked back to his racer.

"Well, that was my good deed for the day…" The captain reached into the sole pocket of his trousers, took out a pen and piece of paper and crossed something out. "I hope this means that Scoutmaster Ellis will finally give me that badge I've been working for since I was twelve."

Once the man had finally made his way back to his racer (he had taken a brief detour in order to fight a vulture and eat an unidentified carcass, in that order), he jumped inside and saluted Snake and Dr. Mario.

"See you out there in the race of life! And if trouble ever comes your way, be sure to FALCON PAWWWNCH it in the gut!" The captain closed his racer's hatch and sped away, his awesomeness killing a flock of birds flying overhead (Either that, or it was the racer's fumes that did them in, as the liberal media would have you believe).

Snake and Dr. Mario stared dumbly off into the distance for several minutes because the author had no idea what else to write down at the moment. Dr. Mario popped another handful of pills in his mouth and listened to some Pink Floyd on his iPod to kill some time.

Suddenly, the not-so good doctor saw something out of the corner of his eye that pulled him out of his prescription drug-induced euphoria; it was a large semi, barreling towards him and the bearded loner standing next to him like a rabid fangirl squeeing over a bad Marth/Ike fic. In the driver's seat sat an enraged man of Mexican descent, who was cursing and ranting in Spanish something about brutally killing a wolf-man and reclaiming his lost honor.

"Snake, get out of the way!" shouted Dr. Mario as he knocked the operative out of the proverbial way simply because he hadn't much of a role so far in the story. He opened up a bottle of his patented arthritis/pain relief supplication Painosaurus® and emptied the entire bottle in his mouth. In an act of pure heroic awesomeness, Dr. Mario leaped at the truck and cried "PHARMA PAWWNNCH!"

Dr. Mario's right fist grew twenty times larger than normal and he punched the front end of the truck. It exploded into a prodigious orb of shrapnel and fire and then from on high, a heavenly choir sang the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's _Messiah_. The doctor's fist shrunk; he then made a fighting stance, brought his hands together and bowed his head.

He walked over to where Snake was and asked, "Uh, now where were we at before all this happened…?"

Snake, who just wanted to go home, said in an angry growl, "You said that if I wanted to take you to Wario's party, I would have to fight you and then you took out your stethoscope and twirled it around and made karate noises and some other stuff like that."

"Oh, right," said Dr. Mario, twirling the stethoscope and again doing a karate scream. Just then, his eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he fell to the ground. Standing behind him was Major Aholl, who was holding his blowgun, and Heli-Doctor, who wore a camouflage shawl around her shoulders, a white blouse, a tan skirt and black high heels, was holding a large black garbage bag.

Snake walked over to them, flashed a brief smile to Dr. Kent and watched as she scooped the doctor up into the bag and tied it shut. She looked so sexy, stuffing guys into bags. Rawr!

"Well, Snake," said Major Aholl lighting a cigar. "Another mission completed successfully." He offered Snake a cigar, but the bearded man refused, taking out a cigarette for himself and lighting it.

After a couple minutes of inhaling carcinogenic tobacco and tar vapors, Snake took his cigarette out of his mouth. He had an emo look on his face, the kind of look that warned you that he was about to launch into a lengthy speech.

"Am I a monster, Major?" He asked, staring into the flaming end of the eyeball-colored stick. "Am I just a cog in an infernal machine of tyranny?"

He turned to face the field of barbecues and shouted, "Are we all just cogs in someone's machine, rather than our own machine? Wouldn't be good if we all could find the machine within us and—"

He was cut off when he felt a dart from Aholl's blowgun embedded in his neck. He hit the dusty ground and the major said to Dr. Kent, "Get a bag for him, too. I swear, with the way he carries on, you would think that he's fourteen years old…"

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><p>The next day, every bigwig in D.C. came out for Wario's White House party, which was held out on the White House's North Lawn. All of those guys from the House and Senate who are usually at each other's throats were able to, at least for a few hours, pretend that they actually liked each other. Some people from town were invited as well, but they were far and few between, seeing as how Wario made everybody pay $400 a person for admission.<p>

The aforementioned world leader was stationed at his own barbecue, smiling with his trademarked Sleazy Smile™ and offering guests some onion and garlic kebabs and veal scaloppini with garlic and horseradish sauce. Vice President Dedede was grilling a colossal piece of beef brisket with his wife and son standing nearby. Dr. Mario stood at a large kettle grill, grilling bananas dipped in coconut milk and brown sugar, portabella burgers and Mexican grilled corn while two Secret Service agents stood behind him with their guns trained on him in case he should try to run off.

There was no day-off for Solid Snake however; he was forced to carry serving trays and drinks to the guests while everybody else was having fun. At one point during the festivities, he stopped at a table where Dr. Crygor, Penny and her parents were sitting. Snake stood there and talked to Penny's parents for awhile about what a good daughter she was and how she would grow up to be a fine young woman like her grandfather (Who was neither young nor a woman, except back in 1921).

Some meaningful and heartfelt dialogue was exchanged, but the author chose not to record it. This chapter is long enough, after all.

After leaving the table and getting even more grief from Dr. Crygor about wrecking his modified Chevy Impala, Snake stopped dead in his tracks. He saw a table nearby where Otacon was seated with his adopted daughter Sunny along with Mei Ling and Meryl.

Eager to take a break, he sat down and talked with them for a bit. To spare the reader from the monotony of more Metal Gear-ish speeches, the author elected only to record the bits that he felt had any real significance to the story.

"Mei Ling, what happened to Colonel Campbell? Is he, you know…?"

"No, Snake," said Mei Ling, shaking her head. "Colonel Campbell isn't dead, he's just in a place that's about the same as death: a VA retirement home in Virginia."

"Oh," said Snake in a kind of purr, trying to subconsciously hit on Mei Ling while wanting to go out with Dr. Kent at the same time.

He turned now to Meryl. "Meryl, where's Johnny?"

"Oh, he ate some of Dr. Mario's ribs and, uh…" she had a very uncomfortable look on her face. "You know."

"Ah," said Snake, making a mental note not to come within fifty yards of the porta johns. He then wondered to himself why Kojima made Johnny marry Meryl in MGS4: Guns of the Patriots instead of him. Well, there was that whole "Snake looked like an old guy and only had a year to live" thing…

After some more pointless banter, Snake and Otacon watched as Penny and Sunny danced around a few feet away, singing along to some sugary J-Pop song. Snake smiled as he watched the two of them, silently wishing that he was one of them, except still a dude. _Someday… _he thought, _Someday I will be free. Someday I will play for the children again… _He could feel tears forming in his eyes while a sad cellist played a sad song in his mind.

After a couple minutes, Snake turned around and grabbed a hot dog from a platter on the table. He had just put a mound of sauerkraut and copious amounts of brown mustard on the thing and was ready to take a bite out of it when Otacon said in an angry tone, "Snake, you're not eating a hot dog, are you?!"

Snake turned to the dark-haired man. "Yeah, so what if I am?"

"Don't you realize that most hot dogs commonly contain the chemical compound sodium nitrate, which is known to contribute to cellular degeneration and even cause stomach or rectal cancer?"

Snake growled furiously, throwing the hot dog on the table. First, everybody would gang up on him whenever he tried to enjoy a good cigarette, now he couldn't even eat a hot dog! What was the world coming to?

He got up, fighting the urge to unleash his Final Smash powers on the world at large. He could hear that The Drunken Slurs were starting to play on some crappy stage they had set up and went over there. As soon as Snake was out of sight, Otacon quickly grabbed the hot dog that the operative had left behind and ate it.

Snake came up by the makeshift stage and saw Fox, Falco and that nerdy guy who looked like Pit who was wearing glasses, a white shirt, gray pants and sandals, were getting ready to play. Fox stepped up to the microphone and said, "Hi, everybody. We're The Drunken Slurs and we're from Cincinnati, Ohio. We're gonna play some songs for you, so sit back and enjoy."

Snake could see that everybody in the crowd was sitting on picnic blankets and that Dr. Kent was waving for him nearby. He went where she was and sat down; he noticed that she was still dressed in the same ensemble she had worn in the desert. _Hmm, I wonder if she has a closet full of the same clothes like I do…_

The woman handed him a can of Coke and he opened it. Fox and the band began to play up on the stage. Fox started playing a really cool-sounding guitar riff that reminded Snake of something that Jimi Hendrix would've played. He sipped from the can. _Man, I've got to get one of these guys' CDs._

The nerdy guy joined in with a slow drumbeat and Falco started quietly picking his bass with his nonexistent thumb. After a minute or so, Fox began singing in a high falsetto:

My girl, she look me in the eye,

She say, 'Why you try to sing like a black guy?'

Now she make me sit and wonder why,

Every night, she make lay in bed and cry.

He played a mournful blues tune on his guitar. Snake was so totally engrossed in the concert, he didn't feel Heli-Doctor put an arm around his shoulders or steal his wallet, which she then gave back because her conscience bothered her.

An hour later, the sun had begun to set and the Slurs were still going strong. Fox played a psychedelic tune on his guitar as the drummer guy beat his drums so fast that Snake thought the man was going to give himself a heart attack.

Fox sang in a slurring voice:

I see a girl with long socks,

There's an angry black fox,

Pokémon are runnin' through my brain,

All them mons are makin' me insane.

As the drummer guy who looked like Pit (Who actually was Pit) banged on his drums, he saw a terrifying sight in the crowd: it was Palutena! Pit swallowed hard. He had been on the run from his goddess for the last three years because he had realized that he was in love with her and whenever he saw her…

Suddenly, he felt that all too familiar sensation spread across his face. He closed his eyes and silently prayed that it wasn't happening, but then he saw the horrible truth. Shooting out from his nose like a raging river was a geyser of blood that flew all over Fox, Falco and everyone in the crowd. Pit screamed trying to cover his face, but was knocked down from the pressure of trying to hold it back.

While he was on the floor spraying like some gory fountain, Fox and Falco came over to him, drenched in blood, and smacked Pit with their instruments. The crowd was so caught up in the music and the booze and stuff that they were totally oblivious to what was really going on and they cheered as the two anthropoids murdalized Pit.

Some guy pulled the curtain shut and the crowd still cheered. Then, there was a loud explosion and a giant cloud of black smoke appeared in the sky above the stage. The smoke dissipated and Lucario appeared, his eyes glowing like Edward Cullen and his fur as blue as a boy could be. An unseen Japanese flute played a tune that sounded like a wolf howling. His fists were encased in holy frickfire, much like Harry Potter's were in Thirty Hs. Everyone was so plastered that they didn't get what was happening and applauded.

Dr. Mario's eyes went wide, as did the eyes of the two guns holding him at gunpoint. Seeing that his moment was now, Dr. Mario used his stethoscope to grab one of the suits around the neck and then he unrealistically flung the guy into the other agent nearby. Both men's faces collided and they were both sent to Concussion Land, both with very bad concussions that would guarantee them entry therein.

Dr. Mario ran away from his grill and came up to the stage, where Lucario floated high above. "Master Lucario," he said bowing at the waist, talking like he was in a martial arts movie once again. "I knew you would hear my inner grill marks calling for you."

"This had better be good," said Lucario in a stereotyped martial arts master-like voice. "I was playing chess with the Dalai Lama, and he always cheats!"

"Master, rescue me and The Drunken Slurs from Wario!" said Dr. McDreamy, uh, I mean Dr. Mario. "It would bring great honor upon you."

Lucario nodded slowly. Using the powers of his mind, he grabbed Dr. Mario and lifted him up to where he stood in the heavens. The blue jackal then flew behind the stage, mentally grabbed the brawling Drunken Slurs (Pit's nose at least had stopped bleeding since he had plenty of wounds for his blood to come out of now) and flew above the White House.

The blue jackal creature that looked like he had been stolen from Egyptian Mythology looked down in disgust at the mortals below. He shook his head with an equal amount of contempt, mixed with disappointment. If only they could all learn the Way of the Barbecue and could speak to one another with their inner grill marks, the people of this world could dwell together in harmony with one another…

Rather than wasting his time shedding any tears for their pitiful condition, Lucario closed his Edward Cullen eyes and flew swiftly back to his Tibetan sanctuary with Dr. Mario and his three new manslaves, uh, acolytes.

After the crowd realized that The Drunken Slurs had left the building, their good feelings had worn out. They then all surrounded Wario and were preparing to take their anger out on him. Wario called for the Secret Service guys to help him out, but then he could see that even they had joined in with the crowd and wanted a piece of grilled Wario tuchas.

The fat man realized that he was now up the proverbial creek without a paddle. He had to act quickly to save his sorry hide. Using what little brainwaves he possessed, Wario willed Roachie to stimulate his brain cells to come up with some kind of idea to get everyone off of his butt. And sure enough, Roachie did just that and a brilliant idea came to Wario.

"STOP!" shouted Wario. Everyone stopped like the obedient sheep they were. "I've got-a good news and-a bad news. The bad-a news is that I had to have everybody's car impounded in order to pay for this party and to get-a The Drunken Slurs and Dr. Mario here."

Everyone started booing loudly and they began to march towards him again. Wario then quickly added in a more cheerful tune and once again, the sheeple ceased their movement. "But-a the good news is-a your cars are impounded in-a the most crime-ridden area of-a D.C. Whoever survives gets-a free tickets to Wario World!" He chuckled, pulling out fake ticket stubs printed on graham crackers.

The angry crowd grumbled as they turned around and left to find their cars. Wario wiped his brow and sighed. "Wooh, was that-a close-a one." Then Wario started having an MGS moment in his mind about if it was really worth it being President, but the author chose to leave that for a later chapter because of time constraints.

As Snake and Heli-Doctor held hands and headed off with the angry crowd, Vice President Dedede stood off in the distance with his wife and son, staring intensely at the President.

"What a despicable outrage!" he drawled, punching one of his hands. "That incompetent buffoon is the President of the United States? Ah tell ya honey, George Washington and all the men who gave their lives for the freedom of this great nation must be rollin' ovah in their graves to see a man like Wario as President!"

He stomped a foot and pointed at himself. "And Ah for one swear today that man is goin' down!"

Dedede's wife tapped him on the shoulder, "Uh, honey? Remember what the doctah said about your blood pressure."

Dedede slumped. "Yes, ma'am."

* * *

><p>AN: I apologize for the length of this chapter. Chapters 9 and 10 were once one chapter, but I spilt it up because I was worried that I would inadvertently kill some of my readers due to the length. O_o

Unfortunately, the thing that Otacon said about the hot dogs is true. I thought I would throw that in since in every single Metal Gear Solid game somebody warns Snake about the health hazards of smoking.

Just a quick note: this is technically the last chapter that I have written for this story so far, so it may be some time before the next one comes out. But don't worry; you haven't seen the last of Snake and Wario's crazy antics.


	11. It Ain't Easy Being Chief, Part One

**A/N**: I'd like to apologize for my extremely long hiatus. I've been busy with school and life and haven't had much time to write a new chapter for Hail to the Chump in ages. I'm sure I've probably lost a few readers along the way, but if you're one of the folks who've been following this fic from the beginning, welcome on back! If you're new to this story, WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING READING THE LAST CHAPTER FIRST?! GO BACK TO THE BEGINNING AND START THERE! …lol, jk.

Anyways, this is kind of a different chapter for HTTC, namely because it's told from Wario's perspective rather than Snake's and it's going to be kind of angsty as well. I'm planning on putting a few Wario-centric chapters in here before the end, so I hope you'll enjoy them.

Enough exposition: it's time to schlock and load!

**Like, I totally don't own Smash Brothers, dude. And I'm not claiming ownership of any of the characters (Except for maybe an OC or two) because that would be totally heinous! **

Strap yourselves in, dudes and dudettes! Here we go!

…Ugh, I've got to get out of the 90's…

Oh, I should probably warn you that there's some gratuitous references to Wario Land 4 and Wario World in this chapter, not that it'll make much difference anyways to the story overall. Anyhow, let's get on with the show.

* * *

><p>Wario smiled. Today was the happiest day of his life.<p>

It was a beautiful April morning in Washington; he was sitting on the shore of the Tidal Basin, beneath the pinkish-white canopy of a cherry blossom tree in full bloom. There was a faint breeze in the air that morning that made the branches of the tree sway ever so slightly, shaking free loose petals, causing them to lazily drift to the ground below like flakes of hot-pink snow.

Wario sighed contentedly as he watched the falling petals. It was so nice to get away from that damned desk and leave all that paperwork for another time. It was so good to forget about the world and his job for awhile and just enjoy his time with _her__._

She was sitting next to him, with her head on his chest. Her long hair was pink, just like the cherry blossoms falling all around them. Her eyes were closed and there was a peaceful smile spread across her face. She looked just like an angel.

Princess Shokora. _His _princess: the woman that he loved more than anything else in the entire world (next to money, of course).

Of all the treasures he had ever found in life, she was the greatest; better than a thousand bars of solid gold, better than finding a mother lode of silver, better than that evil black jewel that destroyed his castle, turned all of his treasures into monsters and tried to kill him years back, better than that cursed Faberge egg that he found that could kill anyone who touched it and caused its victims to cough out a real egg with their dying breaths, better than—well, you get the picture.

It had been so long since they had last seen each other, so long since that fateful day the two of them had escaped from that collapsing golden pyramid deep in the heart of the jungle. Wario could still remember how he and Shokora—who was trapped in the form of a black cat—stood on that cliff and watched as the ancient pyramid sunk into the earth. The two of them had shared a laugh, happy to have escaped death and just be alive. It was not long after that the millennia old curse that had been placed upon Shokora by the hideous Golden Diva was broken and she returned to her true form.

Wario could still remember how awestruck he had been when he first saw Shokora. He had never seen a woman who had ever looked as beautiful as she did before, and he had never seen one who was more so afterward. Never in a million years had he suspected that that mangy black cat that followed him around the whole time he was down inside the pyramid was actually a princess.

And _what_ a princess she was.

His heart was pounding like a jackhammer after she had kissed him on the cheek, thanking him for saving her as if he were some brave knight in a tale from years long past (thankfully, this knight's tale was completely unlike that one with Heath Ledger and thus lacked an anachronistic soundtrack and gratuitous product placements for Nike).

Wario had felt so giddy that day, like a hyperactive kid in a candy store who was climbing on the ceiling of said candy store like a deranged Spider-Man with a crazed look on his face and a lollipop sticking out of his mouth as his parents watched from below in helpless dismay. He had discovered countless riches and treasures inside the Golden Pyramid, but he now had found something that seemed to make all of those things pale in comparison.

His head spun with all manner of crackpot ideas and schemes in that moment. His mind was filled with visions of him and the princess spending the rest of their days together, ruling over a vast kingdom in grandeur and opulence, standing on a beach hand in hand and watching as the sun sank beneath the waves, drinking martinis in a pool full of caviar, creating an ingenious real estate scam involving high-priced condominiums built along the Amazon River in an area populated by a hostile tribe of cannibals and raising a gaggle of hideous children who all had Wario's nose and moustache among other pointless fantasies.

But all of those dreams were shattered as Wario had watched in silent horror as Princess Shokora was taken up into heaven in a beam of light, flanked by a countless multitude of angels. He had sat there for time immeasurable long after she had disappeared, feeling like he had been stabbed in the heart. Just when he had finally thought he had gotten his big break, just when he had found the greatest treasure of all, she had been taken away from him. Sure, he had found thousands of gold coins and all kinds of priceless treasures to add to his coffers, but without Shokora, it felt like his quest had been all for nothing. What could have been the biggest payoff of all time had turned into one of his most crushing defeats.

He always found himself thinking about Shokora in the years that followed. He wondered what his life would have been like if she hadn't gone away. He often would waste away countless hours wistfully in thought, thinking of the life that they could have had together. He had tried so many times to bury his memory of her by seeking comfort in his riches and by going on adventures in search of more treasures, but it was no use. No matter how hard he tried, he could never forget about her, and he could never find anything that could ever possibly compare to her.

Even after he had become president and had assumed all of the pressures and anxieties that came with the job, she was always on his mind. How he would have loved to have had her by his side that cold winter's day he marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, his heart full of triumph and happiness, back when the people adored him and treated him like he was a god. How he wished she had been with him in the last few months, when he sat alone in the darkness, weighed down by crisis after crisis, plummeting approval ratings and increasing dissent within his own party. If she could only have been there to hold him in her arms and tell him that it would all be alright in the end…

Wario had spent years wondering why Shokora had left. Over the decades, he had constructed many complicated theories to explain why; theories that were so detailed, rambling and paranoid in nature that they almost seemed like they had been created by the same guys who put that show on the History Channel about how JFK had been assassinated by a group of ancient aliens disguised as Bigfoot who were the last remnants of the lost civilization of Atlantis and had originally created the pyramids to serve as giant cheese graters. Yet despite his many theories, he could never come up with an answer that truly satisfied him.

He had all but given up hope of ever seeing her again as the days turned to months and years. And yet, here she was, sitting with him. He had no idea how she had come back, and part of him really didn't care about the how or the why. After all of the hell he had been through in just the last year alone, all that really mattered right now was that she was here with him again. All the days he wasted wallowing in misery were over. His princess had come home.

Shokora lifted her head up from Wario's chest, her eyelids fluttering, revealing a shining pair of brilliant blue eyes. She shifted her posture so that her back was resting against the trunk of the cherry blossom tree. Wario glanced at her, smiling. She looked even more beautiful than the day he first saw her. She returned the smile, the breeze gently ruffling her hair.

He took her left hand in his right and looked back at the vista of falling blossoms, sighing.

"Oh, Wario…" said the princess, her voice dreamy. "I wish we could stay like this forev—"

"SIE SIND DAS ESSEN UND WIR SIND DIE JÄGER!"

* * *

><p>"MAMA MIA!"<p>

Wario's eyes shot open, the visions of the cherry blossoms and Shokora vanishing in an instant. With a jolt, he sat up, his rotund form drenched in sweat. He was gasping and panting for air like a sow in labor that was being waterboarded. His eyes were wide in terror and had that spaced-out anime character look. His ears were full of the sounds of ominous German chanting and distorted Japanese lyrics.

It took him a moment to gather his bearings. Once he was in a somewhat calmer state, he looked around. He wasn't beneath the boughs of the cherry blossoms with his beloved; he was in his presidential bedroom, sitting up in his presidential bed, wrapped in his presidential bed sheet that had an embroidered presidential seal on it.

The president let out an audible curse. _Just a dream_, he thought ruefully with a shake of his head. Just when he thought that his lonely days were done, that his princess had come back to him at last, it was nothing more than another useless fantasy.

Fighting back tears, he turned to his right. The morning sun was shining through the nearby windows, signaling the dawn of a new day. Another miserable, lonely, stressful day. He sighed heavily.

He then glanced down to the nightstand next to the bed and beheld the infernal thing that had awoken him. It was a clock, cast in the shape of a gruesome, grinning monstrosity with a skinless face made entirely of muscle. Between the shiny teeth of the beast was an LCD screen that read in flickering, flame like orange: 6:30 A.M. High energy music poured forth from speakers located on the back of the head shaped clock.

With a snarl, Wario brought a meaty palm down on the top of the clock, replacing the music with five seconds of high-pitched adolescent screaming. As much as he was tempted to body slam the blasted thing to bits for disturbing him, he couldn't bring himself to do so. The clock had been a housewarming gift from the previous president, a man whom Wario greatly admired as both a peer and a friend. He had left the clock on his desk along with a note on Inauguration Day, giving some words of encouragement to the new president. The former president had said that he had bought the clock while in Japan once and that it was supposed to be a character from some show over there called Shin Achy or Achy Shins or something along those lines. Even though it was ugly as sin (even by Wario's standards) and always scared the crap out of him, Wario considered it to be a token of mutual friendship between the two of them. No matter how bad he felt like pummeling the thing some days, he always held himself back for that reason alone.

The mustached man worked his way out of the bed and stepped into a pair of green loafers. He walked to his bedroom door, opened it and waddled down the hall to his presidential bathroom, where he took care of some unofficial presidential business. When that was done, he went up to the sink and washed the sweat off of his ugly mug (many liberal pundits have noted that Wario's skin is so naturally greasy that it contains enough oil to power America for at least a hundred years, thus making the Iraq War completely unnecessary).

As he dried off his face with one of his presidential towels, Wario looked at himself in the mirror. Years back, he had heard about how being president could make you look older, due to the amount stress involved in the job.

Now he could see firsthand that the stories were true.

Here and there, his brown hair was streaked gray. Likewise, white was beginning to mottle his once completely jet black mustache. Around his eyes were dark circles and underneath hung heavy bags. His face, once the grinning, studly countenance of a millionaire playboy, was growing more and more wrinkled, with lines appearing around his mouth and forehead, and crow's feet spreading out from the corner of his eyes like river deltas. He had only been president for three years and already he looked horrible.

Wario put his hands down on the bathroom counter and stared down into the sink's basin. He sighed, mentally repeating the same question he had been asking himself every day for the past year:

_Why am I doing this? _

He could plainly see—and feel—what it was doing to him. He had given himself an ulcer four months ago because he had been so stressed over the continuing fallout from nearly going to war with Canada. He also found himself struggling off and on with bouts of insomnia due to numerous other issues and concerns. He even had to check himself in to the White House Medical Unit once because he had severe chest pain from upsetting himself over some stupid partisan wrangling going on in Congress.

He hated being president. He hated how it made him look; he hated how it made him feel. He hated waking up every day and going through the same grind. He hated feeling like the weight of the entire world was bearing down on his shoulders. He hated how he could never just relax and how it always seemed that some new crisis would start just as another would end. He hated everything about it. How anyone could do this job for four, or even eight years, without having a nervous breakdown was a mystery to him.

And yet, despite all this, he had just announced the day before in his weekly radio address that he intended to seek a second term. He had even started gathering private donations weeks in advance to fund his reelection campaign!

Was he insane? He knew deep down that this job would kill him eventually, so why did he still want it so badly? What could possibly make him want to keep throwing away his life like this?

Wario looked up at his reflection. With a frustrated snarl and a wave of his hand, he stormed out of the bathroom. He didn't have time for this. He had to get moving; it was almost time for his morning workout.

Marching down the hall, he went into his room, slipped a pair of gray yoga pants over his black boxers with golden dollar sign print and changed out of his sweat-stained a-shirt and into a gray tank top. He cast a glance over at the clock: 6:40. Just ten minutes to go before the workout session began.

Wario ran out of his room and down the halls as fast as his stubby legs could carry him. Several aides wished him a good morning as he plowed into them and sent them flying as he continued on his hajj to the gym.

It was going to be another long day…


	12. It Ain't Easy Being Chief, Part Two

Wario was furious by the time he had finished his morning workout and had made his way to the White House kitchen to have breakfast.

_Who does-a that Wii Fit Trainer think-a she is? I'm-a not-a fat!_

He thought this as he angrily shoveled twelve whole eggs, two pounds of bacon, ten breakfast sausages and fifteen pancakes into his gaping maw; the kitchen staff stood nearby, their faces frozen in silent horror as they witnessed the Commander-in-Chief stuffing himself like an overstuffed Christmas goose that was ready to explode at any minute into a gooey spray of apple and onion stuffing all over an intensely hot oven that would be next to impossible to clean. Executive Chef Kirby was lying asleep in a pot during all of this. He was always sleeping, that is when he wasn't eating his own cooking or out raiding watermelon patches in the wee hours of the morning, occasionally eating a watermelon farmer or seven.

As Wario ate with fury of a disgruntled otaku angry over how that one anime he had spent most of the year watching had a crappy ending, random chunks of food pelted the inert cooks, causing them to silently wish that the president either would learn some table manners or would have elected to eat in one of the White House's dining rooms instead (Wario would have eaten in one of said dining rooms, but he was in too much of a hurry to do so. Either that or he felt like being a jerk and wanted to mess up the kitchen for them).

After he was done eating, Wario trotted back to his bedroom and swapped his yoga outfit for his signature hat, a navy blue suit, a red tie and a pair of olive hued clogs. He looked over at the alarm clock: 8:15. In less than ten minutes, he would be meeting with his personal secretary to discuss his schedule for the day and within the hour Shadow would have the Daily Brief waiting for him on his desk.

Wario groaned wearily. He was running late; he had wasted too much time wrestling with his demons earlier. By now, Henrietta and Shokora should have been fed and his perusal of the day's headlines should have been done with. It looked like he was going to be forced to skip his daily "personal reflection time", which consisted of him thoroughly prospecting his nostrils while reading a passage from the Dao De Jing and a chapter from Richard Nixon's memoirs, along with ten randomly generated hipster quotes and a copy of a random, angsty private message from a teenage girl complaining to her GF about her relationship woes (provided courtesy of the good folks at the National Security Agency, whose motto is 'Swiggity doo, we're watching you').

Not wanting to waste another minute and knowing that his pet hen and cat could get quite ornery when they were hungry, the fat man quickly toddled over to his dresser and snatched up his WarioPad, a device that was nothing more than a yellow Amazon Kindle with a plastic replica of Wario's nose and moustache glued above the screen. He powered on the device, downloaded the daily _New York Times_ and stormed out of his bedroom, body slamming into several staffers as he made his way to the Tennis Court, where Henrietta made her dwelling three seasons out of four.

* * *

><p>Dedede was not having a good morning. He had woken up late, scalded his tongue on his morning coffee and had eaten the huevos rancheros his wife Dadada had made for him so quickly that he had given himself indigestion. Then, what should have been a quick fifteen minute drive to the White House had turned into a miserable hour stuck in D.C's eternally gridlocked traffic. So it was safe to say that he was in a pretty bad mood by the time he had finally made it to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.<p>

But it was what he saw outside of the passenger window of his limousine that really made him angry.

There was a crowd of well over 1,000 people standing outside the gates of the White House's North Lawn. They were carrying signs and wearing T-Shirts bearing various slogans such as 'Impeach Wario', 'Wario? Hell No!', 'WariNo', 'Wario Blows' and 'Wario is a Homunculus" among other more colorful statements. Doubtlessly, these protestors were here because of Wario's announcement the day before, where he had declared his intentions to run for reelection. But then again, it was hard to say if that was the case, seeing as how protests had been held outside of the White House almost daily for the past year. Most of the time it was difficult to figure out what exactly the protestors were protesting about in the first place; Wario had a long list of blunders and scandals under his belt that made some of the more controversial presidents in history not look half as bad.

Dedede sighed as the limousine slowly rolled up the driveway towards the North Portico. _If Ah was the president_, he thought bitterly, _none of this would be happening._

He cast a glance at the White House grounds, admiring the superb landscaping, and then looked up at the ever approaching mansion. This all could have been his three years earlier, if only circumstances had played out differently. He had been the Republican candidate in the last presidential election. He was faring well in the polls against his Democratic and Federalist challengers, mostly because the former had repeatedly shot himself in the foot by making several incredibly stupid remarks that even the most forced and mealy mouthed of apologies couldn't atone for and the latter was simply written off as an angry white male and an old fart who made some valid points, but likely had a snowball's chance in hell of actually getting elected because he was so old. For a while, it looked like victory was within Dedede's grasp and there was talk among some insiders who suggested that he could even win in a landslide just like Nixon and Reagan had done decades before (how can you go wrong when you've got Karl Rove doing your math for you?).

And then along came Wario.

Dedede laughed when he had learned Wario had become the Federalist Party's new presidential candidate. He was a hideous, 308 pound ignoramus with no political experience whatsoever, whose only claims to fame were being the former president and CEO of a bankrupt video game company and the spokesman for a body spray that smelled like steak. The Federalists would've have been better sticking with that old coot Kershaw; by making Wario their candidate, they were practically handing Dedede the election.

In the end, however, it was Wario who have the last laugh. Dedede had never counted on how Wario would be able to use his riches to rags story of how he had gone from being the head of WarioWare to a nearly impoverished itinerant worker to tug at the heartstrings of the voters. He had never figured Wario to be such a skilled and fiery orator who would spend the four short months of his campaign passionately railing against the alleged abuses and corruptions of the two-party system. And certainly he could never have predicted what would happen come Election Night.

In the days prior to the election, Dedede publically exuded confidence that he would be able to pull off a decisive victory; privately, he was not so confident he would be able to succeed. The polls had been close for weeks; sometimes Wario was shown with a several point advantage, while at other times it was Dedede who was ahead and in some polls, both men were neck and neck with each other. It was really anybody's guess who would emerge as the victor when the polls closed, but it still didn't stop the talking heads from putting their useless two cents in, though.

What happened next was something that no one had foreseen: Wario had won the popular vote, but both Wario and Dedede had exactly the same number of electoral votes. There always was talk during every presidential election about what would happen if there was a tie in the Electoral College, but very few political scientists, pundits or the media at large ever took such considerations very seriously. The possibility of this ever happening was considered by most to be about as likely as Taylor Swift committing to a relationship that lasted more than three months. And yet, here it was, staring at them all like that googly eyed stack of money in those Geico commercials from years back.

And thus began a period of electoral chaos which hadn't been seen since the turbulent election in 2000 when George W. Bush stole, uh I mean _won_, the vote. Per the guidelines laid out in the Twelfth Amendment, the election was thrown to Congress and the media went insane like a horde of crazed fangirls at a One Direction concert, milking the story for all it was worth. When the dust finally settled, the Federalist controlled House of Representatives voted for Wario to be President, while the mostly Republican controlled Senate cast its ballot for Dedede to serve as Vice President. Once again, the media had a field day with these results; political commentators and the late night comedians particularly took great pleasure in reminding the public how Wario and Dedede, both mortal enemies, would now be working together in the White House.

Dedede was less than pleased with this arrangement. Sure, in front of the cameras he put on a happy face and made it seem like he was taking the whole thing with a sense of good humor, but behind closed doors he fumed at the idea of having to work for the man who had taken away what should have rightfully been his. After all the time, money and effort; after pouring his heart and soul into his campaign, this is how it ended? It was almost as if he had been the victim of some cruel practical joke, like he had been strung along the whole time just so he could be humiliated in the worst possible fashion.

For a while, he tried to swallow his pride and accept the hand that fate had dealt him, allowing a small, naïve part of himself to believe that maybe he could make the best of the situation and that maybe him and Wario could put their differences aside and work together to create a better America. However, any false sense of diplomacy between him and Wario was gone within the first few days after the inauguration. The two men constantly butted heads over almost every issue, whether it be political or personal in nature. Dedede never bothered keeping track of how many times a week he and his rival would go at it or how many times Dadada and Dododo had seen him come home angry. It was just a part of everyday life for him, a part that he wished he could have done without (of course, Dedede could have just resigned after Wario's inauguration, but that would have things a lot more boring).

Dedede had known many people in his life that he could say he disliked, but Wario was the only person he could honestly say he genuinely hated. He was literally the embodiment of everything wrong with politics and the human race in general. He was a shameless hypocrite who spent so much time during his campaign griping about how the Democrats and the Republicans had stabbed Americans in the back by raising taxes so high, yet he was the one who had bullied Congress into hiking taxes even higher once he was in office. He was a coward who refused to take the fight to America's enemies abroad and sat idly by as they consolidated their strength and plotted to carry out attacks against innocent civilians. He was an ignoramus who actually petitioned the USDA to reclassify Jolly Rancher products as a fruit. He—

"Sir?" asked the limo driver, his voice piercing through the miasma of rage that was clouding the big penguin's mind. "I think we should get moving. I don't think it's a good idea to be sitting around here. I don't like the looks of that crowd…"

"Huh?"

With a shake of his head, Dedede snapped himself back into reality. "Ah, Ah'm sorreh," he said weakly with a sigh. "Ah was just thinkin' 'bout the past is all." Normally, he would have made jest of his absentmindedness with a laugh or a wave of the hand, but today he was in no mood to kid around.

With a disgusted groan, Dedede opened the passenger door and stepped out into the bright August sun. The morning air was full of the sounds of cicadas droning, as well as the continuous chanting of the crowd off in the distance: "Wario has got to go! Wario has got to go! Wario has got to go…"

The vice president slammed the car door behind him and nodded to the Secret Service agents standing nearby. Together, they walked under the awning of the North Portico and made their way to the front door.

"You've gotta hand it to Hellbat," said a dark haired agent, referring to Wario by his Secret Service codename. "He sure knows how to draw a crowd."

"Yeah, looks like there's gonna be a really big party today," said another sarcastically as he lit a cigarette.

As they approached the front door, Dedede looked over his shoulder at the protestors. So many angry people; how many of them had put their hope in Wario, thinking he was some kind of messiah who would lead America into a golden age, only to be let down in the end? Had they once bought into Wario's lies, only to realize in time that they had been sold a bill of goods?

Dedede shook his head and continued on to the front door.

* * *

><p>AN: When I was writing this chapter, I realized that I had unwittingly committed a continuity error earlier in this story, namely, that Dedede lived in the White House along with Wario. This is actually inaccurate since the vice president resides in a separate house on the grounds of the United States Naval Observatory. So in order to save face, let's just say Dedede and his family were forced to temporarily live in the White House following an incident in which an inebriated Wario and a college football team, who were celebrating a recent victory, crashed into Number One Observatory Circle and trashed the place. This chapter is set shortly after the reconstruction of said dwelling.

Also, as an interesting historical footnote, while it is extremely unlikely in today's political climate that two candidates could tie in the Electoral College (especially in a three-way race as mentioned earlier), there was an electoral tie that occurred back in the election of 1800. In that race, both Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr had received exactly 73 electoral votes, which led to a long series of congressional squabbling before Jefferson was ultimately declared the winner (See? Fanfics do teach you valuable stuff).


	13. It Ain't Easy Being Chief, Part Three

A/N: Ugh, this chapter was murder to write; I thought I was never going to finish this thing. Feel free to criticize it all you want.

Anyhow, this is the last Wario-centric chapter for a while. We'll be seeing Solid Snake once again in the next several chapters, but Wario will making a few more appearances before this thing ends (Hopefully it will end before I turn forty, judging by the ridiculously long time it takes me to write anything).

Also, I wanted to address an issue regarding the location of the Oval Office in Wario's White House. See, when I first started writing this story, I actually had little idea of the layout of the White House, so I made several errors regarding the rooms (The biggest one in the original draft was where I combined the White House and the Capitol Building!). In actuality, the Oval Office is on the ground floor of the White House, whereas in Hail to the Chump it is located on the second floor. In order to explain this error, my headcanon tells me that Wario converted the Yellow Oval Room into the Oval Office because he liked the view and/or had it moved because he was paranoid for some reason.

Alright, enough jawin'. Let's get on with the show.

* * *

><p>It was four o'clock in the afternoon. Wario was standing on the Truman Balcony, looking out on the South Lawn and doing his best to block out the distant shouts of the protesting crowds that were gathered outside the gates of the White House. It was a habit of his, to come out here in the late afternoon or early evening during the summer in a meager attempt to raise his weary spirit after a long hard day, a little something to try to remind himself that there was more to life than that miserable thing he called his job.<p>

He felt so tired; he had spent most of the day in cabinet meetings, intelligence meetings, staff meetings, meetings about upcoming meetings and had just finished enduring an intense hour and a half session with congressional leaders over the most recent legislative brouhaha on Capitol Hill. He also had spent nearly two hours having phone conversations with administration lackeys, various congressmen and other Washington insiders.

Wario sighed. He would have thought after nearly a full term in office that he would be used to the hustle and bustle, that maybe he would've finally settled into the crazy race that was his job. But no; he always felt worn down by this time of day, like there was a shrieking, seven hundred pound monkey on his back that wanted to do nothing except pull his hair, drive him insane and maybe bite his thumbs off for good measure. He had long ago concluded that being president was just like being bitten by a vampire (an experience he was unfortunately familiar with); it was agonizing, painful and gradually sucked you dry until you felt like you were nothing more than a withered, lifeless husk.

But Wario wasn't just tired; there was something that was bothering him, and it wasn't the fact that there were hundreds of angry protestors thronged around the White House, or the terse words exchanged during the congressional meeting earlier, or that Time Magazine had twice named him worst president ever, or that cartoon he had seen in today's _New Yorker_ that featured a caricature of himself with horns and a goatee kicking an old lady off the edge of a cliff as he laughed manically, tore a copy of the constitution in half and stood on a tattered, faded map of the United States as Washington D.C. burned in the background.

All of these things were equally disturbing in their own unique ways, but what was troubling the president at the moment was an issue that was just as upsetting and perplexing.

An image began to form in his mind. He could see it clearly, like it had just happened this morning… oh wait, it did just happen this morning. My bad.

* * *

><p>"Uwaah! I'm-a gonna be late!"<p>

The girl ran as fast her legs could carry her down the streets of Yokohama. She was a typical archetypical anime schoolgirl, thin and pretty with an annoying high-pitched voice that sounded like a twelve year old who had been huffing the fumes from a helium tank for a couple of hours nonstop. However, there was one trait of this particular schoolgirl that set her apart from the rest of her ilk: she, unlike most anime characters, had a nose. A weird thing it was, looking like a big fat head of garlic dipped in a vat filled with Pepto-Bismol. Beneath it grew a moustache, a wild and jagged outgrowth that looked like a long bolt of lightning slathered in tar.

She was running late for school. She barely had any time to slip into her seifuku or even eat breakfast for that matter, evidenced by the fact that there was a loaf of garlic bread slathered in artery clogging margarine hanging out of her mouth.

She jumped over a sleeping dog and looked down at her watch. She had only two minutes to spare before the bell rang. She continued on her frantic dash, the world suddenly freezing into an incredibly well drawn dramatic anime-like still scene as an awesome J-Popesque guitar riff played.

"Warui Waruyo, 56! Starting today, I'm-a gonna be the president!"

* * *

><p>Wario snapped out of his trance and shook his head in confusion, knocking away the scene. He sighed and shook his head again. <em>That's-a what I get for-a watching all of those cartoons the former president told-a me to watch<em>, he admonished himself. Sure, a lot of them were pretty good, but they had a tendency to screw with his head and cause him to sometimes have crazy dreams or act weirdly, like the one time he was in a meeting and inexplicably jumped up on top of the desk and began to shout "Moshi moshi, Wario desu!"

That sort of thing didn't happen as frequently as it had in the past, but it still was annoying whenever it occur.

Sighing and shaking his head again, he looked over at one of the chairs that sat on the balcony and began to stare at it for no reason at all. He stood motionless, staring with bulging eyes that were growing about as fast as the national debt does in a single day. Once his pupils were about as large two overly ripe grapefruits, a strange sound like wind blowing through a barren hollow was heard, signaling it was time for a pointless Lost-esque flashback to begin.

* * *

><p>Wario drummed his fingers impatiently on the surface of his desk as he stared up at the ceiling. He had ordered a vegetarian sub from a certain restaurant chain that took great pride in its supposedly fast delivery times, and he was beginning to feel very annoyed. It was 11:45; he had placed his order <em>three <em>minutes ago. By now, he should have said meal sitting in front of him, with the smell of freshly baked bread rising to his nostrils like a candy wrapper caught in a updraft and have hundreds of little green pieces of dying vegetables stuck in his teeth. And yet, here he was, _sans en sandwich_ with his stomach half-empty and crying out its protest like a downtrodden Dor-Mart employee trying to get by on a measly 75 cents an hour.

He let out an angered snarl. _This is-a last time I fall-a for scams like-a this_, he thought bitterly as he now was browsing Amazon on his WarioPad for some end of summer deals to kill time. "Oooh! Deluxe Roombas with-a special modifications!" He said cheerfully. He gasped. "For-a fifty percent off!" He gasped again. "For-a sale by a third party seller! I gotta buy it now!"

He placed his order, which is of no real relevance to our narrative other than to serve as a lead-in for a future storyline.

Shortly after this, a delivery boy clad in a nondescript black uniform came dashing through the doors of the Oval Office. He was probably only seventeen, had frizzy red hair, bad acne and would likely never get a prom date based on those facts because people judge others too much on physical appearance in our society nowadays.

"Johnnie Jay's Subs!" he announced in a fast-paced voice that sounded like it was ripped out of a Depression-era newsreel. "Freakin' Fast Fresh Delivery So Fast You'll Flip!" He threw the plastic container that he was carrying like a plastic javelin in a child's game of decathlon and it landed soundly on the president's desk with a richly resonant yet gut wrenching _whump_.

The boy quickly ran up to Wario who was staring at the container on his desk, silently amazed that it hadn't broken open upon landing on the desk. "That'll be $25.77!" he jabbered in his irritating tone. Wario grudgingly fished some money out of his pants and handed it to the teenager, who ran back to the door like his posterior was on fire.

"Enjoy your sub, have a nice day and stay Freakin' Fast and Fresh!" he rattled as he made his way out the room.

Wario looked down at the container, his annoyance being swallowed up by his feelings of hunger. He opened it, took the six-inch sub out and unwrapped it from its shroud of wax paper. It was a vegetarian sub, just as he had ordered (or rather, as what Wii Fit Trainer had forced him to order).

He lifted the sandwich up to his mouth and was about to take a bite out of it, when he suddenly realized that there was something wrong.

There were no alfalfa sprouts. And he _loved_ alfalfa sprouts.

Well, to be fair, he originally hated them because Wii Fit Trainer had forced him to eat them for some kind of health benefits, but he had come to love them in time because they were green like money and crunchy too.

Not that money is crunchy, but you get my point.

Wario's ire began to rise once again. First, the delivery was anything but fast and now they didn't even put alfalfa sprouts on the blasted sandwich?

In anger, he put down the sandwich and reached for the phone in order to give the manager of Johnnie Jay's a profanity laced piece of his mind. Before he could do this, the doors swung open once more. It was the delivery boy again.

"I'm so sorry, Mr. President!" he apologized quickly. "I forgot to give you your Dr. Pepper!" He hurled the Styrofoam cup he was holding and it hit Wario squarely in the face, drenching him from head to toe in tooth rotting carbonation.

The kid made a grimace and sped away quickly. "Sorry about that, sir! Have a good one, now!" He called from down the hall.

Wario could feel his urge to kill rising. His eyes became wide and got that spaced out look that a fangirl gets when she hears that her favorite book is being turned into a major motion picture. It felt as if time had come to a complete stop as the color immediately drained out of everything for some reason, painting the world in a dull and eerie monochrome. There was also the faint sound of chimes jangling in the distance, accompanied by the quiet gusting of wind…

* * *

><p>Wario could feel his pupils beginning to shrink back to their normal, rat sized proportions as he drifted back into the present. He shook his head, blinked once, twice, and realized that those chimes playing in his flashback had morphed into the sound of the telephone ringing on his desk.<p>

He turned away from the South Lawn and walked up to the door leading to the Oval Office. He opened it and stepped through, the chilling sensation of air conditioning greeted him like a long lost friend. He shut the door behind him and walked towards his desk.

He looked at the white plastic thing that was his telephone; there was a red light on the dial that was lit up like a barn in a pyromaniac's daydream, indicating that the call was on his private line.

He shuddered, something in the back of his mind telling him that this call was anything but good news. He eased himself down into his chair and picked up the receiver. He swallowed.

"Wario."

"Wario," said a gravelly voice in a flat tone. "It's Morgan Kershaw."

The president silently cursed. Whenever the Federalist National Committee's chairman called him up, it was never usually to exchange pleasantries or talk about the weather.

"Morgan!" said Wario in a tone that exuded phony excitement and belied the fact that deep within his psyche he could feel his inner goddess screaming for Aquaman to come save him. "It's-a so good to talk you! How's-a your wife holding up?"

"She's dead," the older man spat. "She died six months ago. You didn't even bother sending flowers to her funeral."

Wario tugged at his collar and made a nervous noise. "Ah… hehehe, sorry about-a that. You know how thin-a the budget's-a stretched up here…"

"Let's just cut the crap already," Kershaw said impatiently, his voice full of bitterness. "You know what I'm calling about."

"Oh right," said Wario in a chipper voice, lamely trying to keep himself from sounding as terrified as he felt inside. "You must-a be calling about-a my announcement yesterday."

Kershaw sighed at the other end of the line. "Let me tell you something, Wario." Immediately, Wario opened a desk drawer, took out a Snickers bar and started munching on it, regardless of what kind of retribution Wii Fit Trainer would inflict upon him later. When Kershaw started talking, it was almost impossible to shut him up. He could go on and on about nothing for hours at length, as if he was a living incarnation of an episode of Seinfeld.

"Me and the party, we had a vision. We—"Kershaw stopped for a moment as the sound of loud crunching could be heard through the speaker. "Are you eating a candy bar?"

Wario chewed on a piece of the bar and swallowed. "Yes, I'm-a eating a candy bar, _mother_," he said sarcastically. He then broke a piece off of the confectionery and snorted it up a nostril so Roachie could get his fair share and not feel left out. You wouldn't believe how high maintenance a cockroach living in your brain can be.

Kershaw groaned in agitation and then continued on.

"We dreamed of an America where progress wasn't just empty talk and broken promises," he said through the crunching and smacking at the other end. "We wanted to be a force that would truly make a difference in the lives of Americans. We dreamed of an America where all people would truly be considered equals, where the class warfare perpetuated by the left and right for so long would be a thing of the past. We dreamed of an America where taxes were reasonable and prosperity would not be something reserved just for a privileged few."

He paused for a moment. "And most importantly of all, we dreamed of an America where the stranglehold of the two-party system, which has done nothing but obscure the American Dream behind a smokescreen of special interests and political demagoguery, was broken. We dreamed of the day that bloated, useless entity was just a painful memory in this nation's history."

Wario continued chewing on the candy bar, making note of how many times Kershaw had said the word 'dream' during his little speech and wondering to himself if he happened to be reading all of this off of the Federalist Party website's mission statement page.

"We tried for so many years to get our message out to Americans," Kershaw waxed on, like a highly politicized version of Daniel Larusso, "to let them know that they didn't have to settle for the status quo, but for some reason our ideas never seemed to catch on. People were tired of the antics of both the Democrats and the Republicans and always talked about how they wished there was a viable third party, but when one finally came along, they chose to ignore it. They thought we were crazy; that we were dreamers, fantasizing about a world that could never be." He sighed. "It's so sad to think that it took a zombie apocalypse and a bipartisan tax hike to convince them otherwise."

Wario rolled his eyes as he finished the last of his Snickers bar. Maybe the Federalists should have considered utilizing all of Kershaw's hot air as a fuel source since they always acted like they were so passionate about alternative energy.

"Finally, we managed to gain some ground. We took the House; we would have taken the Senate too, had it not been for a few meddling Republicans and their dog." Kershaw stopped for a moment to mentally reprimand himself. _I knew I shouldn't have watched that Scooby Doo marathon last night_.

Wario paid no attention to Kershaw's remark; he was too busy probing his left nostril, cleaning out the remnants of his snack he had given to Roachie.

"But this was only the beginning," continued Kershaw, his voice beginning to take on a crazed, almost hypnotic tone. "These gains were nothing more than the foundation for what we truly sought: the White House. It seemed like easy enough of a goal, based on our successes in Congress, but that brass ring remained as elusive as ever." He chuckled darkly. "An old guy like me doesn't exactly inspire a great deal of confidence in people, if you know what I mean."

Wario reached into the open desk drawer, took out a toothpick and picked his teeth with it. He sure hoped Kershaw would get to the point soon.

"That's why we approached you, Wario. You were just what we needed to ensure our victory. You had the momentum; you had the charisma to pull it off. The public loved you. People were practically worshipping your farts, for God's sake. If anyone could win the White House for the Federalists, it was you."

Wario threw the toothpick at the wall, neatly spearing a spider that was climbing down it. No doubt that PETA would shortly be sending him some nasty letters about that. "Yeah?" he said impatiently.

"And you did win," replied Kershaw. "All those weeks we spent shaping you into the ideal candidate, all of the time me and the others spent coaching you, it all paid off in the end."

Wario rolled his eyes. "Of course it-a paid off," he said, his voice full of annoyance. "I wouldn't-a be sitting here if it-a hadn't."

"Look," the older man said exasperatedly, "I'm just trying to do a dramatic buildup here, so cut me some slack, will you?"

The president made a disgusted noise. His right ear was beginning to hurt from all of Kershaw's endless yammering.

"Things were going so smoothly during your first few months in office," continued Kershaw. "It seemed like our vision for this country would finally come to fruition. We were happy, Americans were happy. Everyone was happy, happy, happy." He facepalmed. _And then I had to go and watch those reruns of Duck Dynasty, too… _

After taking a couple seconds to recover from his embarrassment, he said in a voice dripping with malice, "And then you went off the rails."

Wario was now playing Tetris with his free hand on a classic Game Boy, trying to beat his high score and keep himself from having a nervous breakdown at the same time. "Uh huh," he said disinterestedly.

"You gave voting rights to zombies!" bellowed Kershaw in a voice that temporarily startled Wario out of the bored stupor he had fallen into. "You put a six percent tax on school lunches! You killed the Prime Minister of Canada! You…"

**45 minutes later**…

Wario was still playing Tetris, and Kershaw was still hollering like a dog without a bone.

"…Your alternative energy program destroyed half of Wyoming! You raised taxes to the highest level that they've been in over a century! And don't even get me started on…"

**2 hours and 57 minutes later**…

Wario was still sitting at his desk, his eyes bloodshot and beginning to feel like they were going to explode at any minute. He could feel Roachie restlessly crawling around inside his head like a toddler in a ball pen, sharing in the agony of his master. The batteries of his Game Boy had died long ago, severing him from what little distraction he could use to entertain himself.

Wario's left eye twitched nervously; there was a leprechaun standing in the corner with a twisted smile spread across his face. He was sharpening a rusty knife on a stone as a merry tune played on a tin whistle.

"Just you wait till you fall asleep, lad," said the leprechaun in a demented voice, squinting one of his eyes as he examined the blade. "That's when the real fun'll begin."

"Mama mia!" exclaimed a startled Wario. He shook his head, the frightful vision fading away like fairy dust in the morning sun.

Kershaw hadn't noticed Wario's outburst or had chosen to ignore it; he was still going at it, although he was starting to run out of breath.

"…And worst of all," he said, breathing heavily from his nearly three hour screamathon, "you appointed Snoop Dogg Chief Justice of the Supreme Court! He's not a judge, he's a rapper!"

"Hey, he told-a me he had a few brushes with-a the law!" countered Wario. "Doesn't that-a count?"

The other man made a shuddering groan. "That means he was arrested, you moron!"

Wario let out a snarl, realizing that Kershaw had shot down his argument with metaphorical bullets of truth. "I just-a liked the fact that-a he always says-a izzle all-a the time, okay?"

Kershaw sighed angrily. "And to believe I used to think Carter and Bush were incompetent…"

"There was a reason why-a you called me, right, Morgan?"

"Yes, Wario," Kershaw said coldly. "There is a reason I called you today. And the reason is this: me and the party, we're sick of you. You have singlehandedly undone everything we had ever hoped to accomplish and dragged our good name through the mud in the process. And we've had enough of it."

Kershaw licked his lips and leaned forward in his chair, as if he was looking into the president's eyes. A crafty smile spread across his lips; he had waited so long for this moment.

"That's why we're refusing to renominate you," he said, his glasses glinting in the anime way.

Wario's mouth hung open. "W-what? You… you can't-a do this to-a me! I'm-a the president!" He shouted, pounding a fist on his desk.

"We can and we will," said the chairman in a voice colder than ice. "I've been in talks with the delegates and party leaders from across the country for the last few months, and we've come to a decision: you've got to go. We can't very well throw our support behind someone who's trying to undermine our agenda every step of the way, now can we?"

"This is-a outrageous!" raged Wario, pounding on his poor desk more and more. "I'm-a the president! You can't-a push me around like-a this!"

Kershaw laughed. "Oh, this is rich! But then again, you always did act like you were a king. Like everyone was your serf and you could just order them around and do whatever you wanted. You seem to be forgetting that without us, you'd be nothing more than a fat old man selling meat-flavored deodorant."

Wario became completely unglued. "OLD MAN? OLD MAN?!" Steam shot out of his ears like an angered, anthropomorphized teapot and his eyes bulged in fury. He could feel several capillaries breaking as anger coursed through him like a river of rage. "WHO ARE –A YOU CALLING AN OLD MAN YOU…"

Wario then launched into a profanity laced tirade that would have put Alec Baldwin to shame and Richard Nixon could never have hoped to censor like so many Watergate tape transcripts. Two White House staffers walked past the shut doors of the Oval Office and overheard the muffled, angry tumult.

"Do you think he's fighting with the manager from Johnnie Jay's again?" whispered one.

"Either that or he's recording a gangster rap album," replied the other. "Or he got Ashley to summon the ghost of George Carlin and he's doing his best Wario impression."

The first speaker shook his head. "There's just no telling with that man…"

Back inside the Oval Office, things had begun to become a bit more family friendly. In fact, they were so family friendly that representatives from the Dove Foundation put their patented Family Approved Seal™©® on the front of Wario's desk.

"You told-a me that-a the party was-a behind me one hundred percent! And now you go and-a do this-a to me?!"

Kershaw chuckled. "Come on, Wario. You should know by now that you can't trust anything anyone tells you in this town. Besides, I promised you all that before you went and screwed up everything for us. Remember the midterms last fall? Consider this as payback for that and everything else. It's only fair. You ruined us, now we're going to ruin you."

"Ruin me?" asked Wario, his voice dripping venom. "I'm-a the president, Kershaw. I have-a powers that-a no one else does. I could do all sorts of-a things to make-a your life very unpleasant. Don't-a think I can't-a hurt you."

"Hmmm. 'Don't think I can't hurt you.' That sounds like a pretty good sound bite for the boys in the press to have some fun with," said Kershaw, amusement in his voice. "Be a shame if something like that were to get leaked…"

"[Expletive deleted]!" The Dove Foundation representatives immediately appeared and removed the Family Approved Seal™©® from the front of Wario's desk only to dematerialize in a very Star Trekesque way.

The older man laughed raucously. "I'm kidding! I'm kidding! I'm not one to play dirty like that. Besides, I could have so much more fun destroying you legitimately than hitting you below the belt like that anyway."

"What do you mean?" asked the president suspiciously.

"You're a smart man, Wario" said Kershaw, stifling a snicker. "You know very well what that means. If the party refuses to renominate you, that means we'll have to go find ourselves a new candidate. You know, one that actually agrees with our principles."

The man gave an exasperated sigh. "I'm so disappointed in you, Wario," he said as he reached into the candy dish on his desk and took out a caramel. "You had so much potential to be a great president. But you had to go and stab everyone in the back and let your own selfishness get in the way. And now, you're going to suffer because of that."

"Do you-a think I'm-a just-a going to sit back and-a let you walk all over me like-a this?" said Wario threateningly.

"In a word, yes," Kershaw said matter-of-factly as he unwrapped the hard sweet and held it up by his desk lamp so that it shone like a piece of primeval amber. "There's not much you can do when your own party's turned on you and you've got a thirteen percent approval rating. It's kind of like being a rattlesnake without any fangs; you can look dangerous and shake your rattle as much as you want, but it won't do you any good in the end. You've got no real power; all you can do is just intimidate the other animals, at least until one of them finds out the truth."

The world fell silent for a moment, as Wario was simmering in his own rage and Kershaw was studying his candy like it was a priceless gem of some sort and, admittedly, that the author had run out of things to say at that point and just wanted to end the chapter already after writing the blasted thing off and on for nearly five months.

"Well," said Kershaw in a slightly upbeat voice forty seconds later. "I think that about covers it all." He popped the caramel into his mouth and said in a cheery, garbled voice, "Good night, Mr. President." The phone disconnected.

Wario furiously slammed the receiver down and then leaned back in his chair. He rubbed his eyes and groaned; the same weariness that had been weighing him down all day just got even heavier.


End file.
